


Remnants

by tenshinokorin



Category: Yoroiden Samurai Troopers | Ronin Warriors
Genre: Multi, Post-Anime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-17 00:10:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1366759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenshinokorin/pseuds/tenshinokorin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2007, they think their old armor is gone completely... <br/>until it comes looking for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was started (and is set in) 2007; completed in December of 2013. Chronologically, this is set in the YST timeline, in which the five were 15 in 1988, making them 34-ish in 2007. I write in a YST/RW hybrid, where the Netherworld characters use the Japanese names and other characters use the English names (mostly). Variations in name spellings reflect my personal preference for the characters. I may occasionally reference other YST/RW fics in my personal canon/timeline, but all stories stand alone unless stated otherwise.

There were three perfect circles of pancake batter on the griddle and Sai had his spatula poised, ready to dispense a fourth, when a singularly unusual event broke his concentration.

"G'mornin," Rowen said.

The pancake batter gloped onto the griddle in a most undignified splatter. "Good Lord, Rowen, what on earth are you doing up at this hour?"

"Looking," Rowen said, his head in the cupboard, "for a cup of coffee."

Sai prodded his horribly deformed pancake with a spatula, in some hopes of turning it back to a presentable shape. "Mugs are by the sink. If I had known that you had turned into a morning person, I would have made extra coffee."

"Ah," Rowen said, with a disgusted face. "Ever since I got a real job my schedule's been all screwed." They spent a moment dancing around each other in the cramped confines of the kitchen as Rowen rooted in the dish-drainer for a mug. Sai and Kento's place was inarguably prime, location-wise, but all Tokyo in its minimal square-footage. "Sage go out to meet the guys?"

Sai gave up on his imperfect blueberry pancake and reached over with the kettle to fill Rowen's cup. "Yes, they should be back from the station anytime now. Sugar?"

"Thanks. So," Rowen asked, hopping onto the counter and settling his backside between the gleaming rice cooker and the fridge. "How're you two doing?"

Sai arched an eyebrow at him. "Are you deeply concerned about our relationship, Mr. Hashiba, or do you simply want to know what Kento is like in bed?"

Rowen faked a wounded look, stirring his heavily sugared coffee with an enameled chopstick from the utensil jar. "It's been a while since we've seen ya, I'm just making sure you two are doing all right, is all." Taking a demure sip from his mug, he added, "I _know_ what Kento's like in bed."

Sai ruined his second pancake. "Dammit, Rowen," he sighed, without any heat. "The telepathic images are not really required."

"Sorry," Rowen grinned. "Habit."

"Hmph. We are fantastically boring, if you must know. As I'm sure you and Sage are, after sixteen years of--" Blueberry pancake batter spattered across the griddle pan and onto the burner again, setting up an acrid wisp of smoke as a summons went off inside their minds. Sai felt as much as heard Rowen's response as it went past him.

"Another one?" Sai snapped off the burner. "That's sooner than I expected."

"Shou-jin-kita," Rowen said, after a moment. "Near Shinjuku. Sage's on it."

"He's not going to be for long, that last one nearly took out Kento and me both before Ryou turned up." Sai pulled the ties free on his apron. "At least Yuli's with them. We'll have some data for Mia this afternoon."

"If we live," Rowen said cheerfully, and he put down his mug. "Damn, could have at least let me have my coffee first."

There was a flicker of azure and cerulean light, and a moment later the kitchen was empty.

  


"Good of you to drop by," Sage said, not quite out of breath as he was flung back into the hands of a suddenly materialized Rowen.

"Hey Sage," Rowen said, "Long time no see. It's been what, twenty minutes?"

"More like two months," Ryou said, picking himself up off the ground. He had left a smoking indentation in the pavement. "Did you bring back my copy of _Shaolin Soccer_?"

"Sorry, it's back at Sai and Kento's. DVDs don't teleport too well."

Ryou grinned as he caught Rowen's arm in greeting. "Yeah, I'm hoping they fix that in blu-ray--"

"What have we got?" Sai asked, breaking up the reunion. "Where's Kento got to--" He broke off as the what in question chose that exact moment to come round a large stack of warehouse crates, Kento's staff clamped in its jaws as it bore the Hardrock warrior backwards across the dock, his armored feet scraping on the asphalt. Ryou ran forward to try and flank it, but the beast's tail was as good as a weapon, and Ryou was hard pressed just to defend himself against the blows. Sai rushed after him to add his strength to theirs.

"I keep hitting it," Sage said, dragging his hand across his mouth. The glove of his yoroi came away smeared with red. "It's not doing a damn bit of good."

"Yuli!" Rowen lifted his head, even though Yuli was nowhere to be seen. "Have you got a reading yet?"

_"He's lighting based,"_ Yuli's voice said, inside his helmet. _"Your attacks won't hurt it, Sage."_

"Thanks for the timely information," Sage said, scowling as he shifted his grip on his sword.

"I'll say it's lightning based," Rowen said, his bow unfolding into his hands. The creature was translucent, flickering with energy. Its shape was vaguely lupine, great yellow eyes and gleaming fangs, but it was twice the size of the cars parked along the warehouse. "Yul! You got a weak spot for me?"

_"Gimme a second!"_

"No problem," Kento grunted, arms shaking with the strain, wincing as the beast's hot breath ruffled his hair, lightning dancing along the armor on his forearms. "Take your time, Yuli." Ryou dodged a sweeping blow from the tail, leaping up and over crates that crumbled under the force as the creature sought to trip him. Ryou landed just out of range, grateful for Sage's hand to help him up.

"I'm getting too old for this."

"No shit," Rowen said. His bow was drawn, level, gold arrow glinting in the sun as he waited for Yuli's information. "You wanna retire?"

"And do what?" Ryou grinned, sweaty. "Macramé?"

_"Go for the eyes, Rowen!"_ Yuli, two streets over in safety, was pounding the daylights out of his laptop, trying to get all the information he could. He didn't pretend to understand how Rowen had uplinked sensors into mystic armor, any more than he knew how the Tenku warrior had rigged the earpieces in the helmets. He was just a code monkey and glad of it. _"Sai! He'll be the most vulnerable to you. And make it snappy, guys, the cops are coming."_

"Shit," Kento said, with feeling.

"Right." Ryou gestured with his left sword. "Kento, keep him busy, Sai, me and you go in when Rowen strikes. Sage, back us up, but try not to hit it with your sword, it'll just feed off of it. Pull Kento out if you've gotta."

Sage did not look pleased at being reduced to relief, but he was not the kind to question orders.

"All righty then." Rowen let his arrow go. The first one thumped ineffectively into the creature's shoulder as it moved, trying to shake Kento. Rowen swore and sent two more in quick succession, and these sank home, deep into the glowing yellow eyes. The lightning beast reared back in agony, tossing Kento aside and through what was left of the crates. It left its throat wide open to Sai's trident, and the prongs caught it and held it just long enough for Ryou to get in, blades flashing with reflected energy.

The ground shook as it fell, and the tremor lasted a full thirty seconds after the slain creature vanished, back to where ever it came from.

"Good," Ryou said. "Maybe it'll get classed as an earthquake."

"Sure," Rowen snorted, kicking at a charred bit of shipping crate that Ryou's attack had left smoldering, "a small, localized, mystical tectonic shift. Real likely."

"Hey, they're still trying to figure out the black ice on Mount Aso from way back when..."

"It's almost a shame," Sai said, looking down at the smoking, scorched patch of ground. "It was beautiful, in a way."

"You wouldn't have said that if you'd smelled it," Kento said, limping over, but Sage said quietly, "I know what you mean."

Sirens wailed, alarmingly close.

_"Um, great job guys, but I think you should get the hell out of there."_

"Right," Ryou said, looking as if he was talking to thin air. "Pack it up, Yuli, and meet us at Mia's as soon as you can."

Sai shrugged, taking off his helmet to sweep back his hair before putting it back on. "I guess we won't be taking the train."

Air tore as the five warriors departed. The dock was empty by the time the squad cars pulled into it, and Yuli was already on the train, his monitoring equipment unassuming in his laptop bag.

  


"Are they done already?" Sai looked surprised, a smear of clay slip on one cheekbone.

Sage shook his head. "No, Yuli's feeding the data into Mia's processor, it probably won't spit out a decent analysis for a while. Rowen's babysitting it."

"Oh, good." Sai reached out for his wire and drew it underneath the simple bowl he'd just finished trimming, separating it from the wheel. "I've got some things I want to finish while I'm here, anyway."

"I heard your last show in Kyoto went really well," Sage said, stepping completely into the cool shadows of Sai's workshop, his eyes following the simple elegance of the vessels on the rough, clay spattered shelves. "Looks like you've got a nice setup going here."

Sai lifted one shoulder, dribbling water from his sponge to clean off the wheel. "Mia's been kind enough to let me work here-- rent for studio space in the city is astronomical. I'd need a lot more than one good art show to afford it." Sai looked up, the wheel going still from his inattention. "Is something troubling you?"

Sage hesitated, gold brows drawn low. "That creature today was the third one we've fought in less than a month. First the one Rowen and I took out in Sendai, and then the one the three of you fought down here last week. It's been so quiet lately, I can't help but think it's something more than the usual supernatural runoff."

Sai considered this, sweeping the clay remnants into the ditch and getting a ball of clay from the trough. "Don't you think we would have seen a pattern in them, by now? I'm worried too, you know. But I don't think we can do anything about it until we know a little more." Sai threw the clay onto the wheel with a decisive flick of his wrist and began to pump the pedal, leaning over to center the clay. "Maybe Yuli got some more information for us today. We can try to track where they're coming from."

"They seem to turn up out of nowhere," Sage said, watching in a kind of peaceful fascination as Sai fanned his fingers up and brought his thumbs down, and a bowl blossomed under his hand. Something about the way Sai could move water and earth under his hands made a stillness inside of Sage, and he wished for the grace of seventeen syllables to frame it. "I never get tired of watching you do that."

Sai laughed in the way he often did when he was complimented, shy and unassuming. "I used to watch my mother for hours. So much that when I finally got to try, she couldn't tell me anything about the process that I didn't already know."

Sage smiled. "An expert from the start, hmm?"

"Oh no." Sai shook his head. "I was horrible at it. Everything I did turned out lopsided and awkward, and I swore never to have anything to do with it."

Sage blinked. "But you've done pottery for years, now. I thought you had always planned to continue the family business."

Sai tilted his fingers, and the bowl became a vase. "Not until after the armor." He lifted his eyes to Sage's and smiled. "I couldn't do it before. I understood the mechanical process. I didn't understand the art." The wheel stopped, and a sake bottle rested in cool wetness on the wheel, gleaming. "And before Kento, I didn't understand the earth."

"I don't understand either." Sage said, rueful. "My family is all about tradition, but there is nothing of a craft so peaceful."

"We're samurai too, you know," Sai said demurely, lifting the wheel off the spoke and placing the sake jar on the worktable to set. "But we turned to this when the navy didn't need us anymore." He searched Sage's face for a moment before asking, "Would you want to try it?"

"No," Sage said, almost too quickly. "I'm lacking in too many elements to even try." His smile was tight. "I'd rather just watch you."

Sai, who knew how to wait, nodded. "Of course."

Sage picked up a lump of discarded clay roughly the size of their lost armor orbs, and squished it speculatively. "Sai."

"Hmm?"

"When you were fighting that thing today, did you--" Sage searched for the words, "Did you sense anything off of it?"

"Besides just the energy of it, you mean?" Sai turned the water on in the sink, working at his fingernails. "No, not really." He splashed water on the muddy faucet knob before turning it off again, and reached for a towel. "Why? What did you sense off of it?"

Sage rolled the ball of clay between his fingers, pressed a dimple in it with his thumb. "I was fighting it first, you know. Before you got there. And when my sword connected with it... it didn't just draw energy off of it." Sage let the clay fall back into the scrap trough. "It _recognized_ me. I recognized it." Sage wiped his fingers on the towel Sai was offering. "I knew it. I don't know how, or any other way to put it. But I knew that thing."

Sai floundered for an answer to that, anything to comfort the trouble in Sage's eyes, but Kento's voice found them, calling from the back porch of Mia's house.

"That's the data finished, I hope," Sai said, grateful. "Maybe it will tell us something?" He clicked off the bulb in the shed, and put a hand on Sage's shoulders as they stepped out into the late afternoon light. "Come on. You'll feel better with a cup of tea in you."

  


In all the years of Sage's familiarity of it, the study in Mia's house had never changed. The windows had been destroyed, more than once, by maraudering agents of darkness. Ryou, too, had done a fair amount of damage to it, in his own frustration. But whenever Sage stepped into it, it was as though for the first time, full of the smell of antiques and rice paper, under the benevolent gaze of empty helmets. The only thing that really changed was the constantly evolving computer equipment, and Yuli. Sage had had enough trouble adjusting to him being seventeen. Twenty-seven was just boggling, as the differences in their ages, so prominent twenty years ago, vanished completely.

"This is really cool," Yuli said, dark eyes flickering over the data speeding across the screen. "Will you look at the sub ether signature of that thing? And the energy reading is bouncing all over the place like a bass equalizer."

Rowen was camped out in the other chair, almost lost in the maze of cords and connectors snaking out of his laptop. He glanced up as Sage and Sai entered with Kento and Ryou in tow, and there was no humor in his voice. "I think we've found something," he said. "You're not going to like it."

"It's been hard to work out," Mia emerged from the storage closet, her arms full of old floppy disk organizers. They had met her just as she had gotten back from the university, and she hadn't bothered to change, still in her prim suit, her hair in a sleek twist. In a corner of the study her briefcase and satchel of papers sat neglected. "All of the data is so old, and some of it never got converted. Yuli figured it out--"

"Figured out what?" Kento said, stomping around behind Rowen and making a face at the utterly incomprehensible state of the screen. "Oh, well," he said, waving a hand at the scrolling line charts. "That just clears it all up."

"You mind explaining it to the rest of us?" Ryou asked. He was acting relaxed, but even if Mia and Yuli couldn't sense his emotions, as his fellow warriors could, the taut muscle in his jaw was quite evident. "We don't need a power-point presentation or anything but--"

"The energy signatures of the monsters you fought looked really familiar," Yuli said, turning around the monitor so they all could see. Six matched graphs scrolled on the screen, replaying clips. The other three were older, but they rose and fell in perfect tandem with the new data samples. "They're the same as your armor." Yuli took off his reading glasses, rubbing at a blossoming headache between his eyes. "Your _old_ armor."

"What?" Sai leaned over to get a closer look at the screen. "That isn't possible--"

"The original yoroi is gone," Sage said, though deep inside of him something twisted, as it had when he looked into the eyes of that sparking, green and gold wolf.

"Look," Rowen said, "Not to get too technical, but energy--even mystical energy--has certain rules. For one thing, everything goes somewhere. Stuff doesn't just disappear or cease to exist. Maybe the armor got destroyed, but something was left behind."

"Yes," Ryou broke in, almost angry. Sage, sensing Ryou's own memories, knew that the wildfire-bearer had felt the same futility when faced with a fiery tiger that his swords could not defeat. "It revived Naria and White Blaze, and then--"

"We're talking about the full set of your armors: the strength of Kikoutei and enough raw energy to wipe out a whole solar system." Mia stood up, her hands on her desk, as though Ryou was a student who was being particularly dense. "Reviving one girl and a tiger probably cost it about as much effort as you would take to sneeze. What about the rest of it? The doors to the Dynasty are closed, it couldn't return to where it came from."

In the study there was an ominous silence, broken only by the whirr of Rowen's laptop fan and the slooshy noises of a white tiger drinking out of his waterbowl in the kitchen.

"It got caught," Sage said quietly. "Pooling in crevices between our world and the Netherworld, unable to dissipate, fermenting--"

"Going fucking _rotten_!" Kento exploded, bringing his fist down on the desk with enough force to make the monitor jump, distorting the relentlessly cycling evidence. "Man, I knew we never should have put that shit on without a god-damn service agreement!"

"I've got the locations plotted here," Rowen said, sweeping off the cords and plunking the laptop down. "Sage and I fought that ugly, horned son of a bitch back home in Sendai--"

"Kento's," Sai said, leaning against the bookshelf. "It was coming down out of the mountains, didn't you say?"

"Right." Rowen tapped the screen with his pen. "And then you guys got Ryou's here near Mount Fuji, we didn't make it in time for that one. And today--"

"Was mine," Sage sighed. It felt better to admit it, to loosen the strange bonds of kinship and subsequent guilt he had felt for the monster. "Which means Rowen's and Sai's are left."

"Hey, easy enough then," Kento said, smacking his fist into his palm. "We just wait for them to turn up, kick their asses, and pfft. Mission Accomplished. Too bad I didn't get to see mine. Was it awesome, Ro?"

"Oh yeah," Rowen said, pulling up his t-shirt sleeve to display a fantastic bruise that spread from his shoulder down to his chest. "Awesome."

"Guys, you're all missing something really important." Yuli ruffled his hands through his already-spiky dark hair, making it stick out at odd angles. "Even if you beat them, all we're doing is dissipating the energy again. There's nowhere for it to go. How long will it be before it comes back?"

"Worse," Sai said, and there was a flicker of blue light across his brow, more than mere intuition. "What if it all gets _together_?"


	2. Chapter 2

"Strange to be sleeping here, ain't it?"

Sage looked away from the view of the mountains, their autumn colors going indistinct and purple with the approach of night. Rowen was leaning in the doorway like a ghost of himself. The room Sage had shared with him years ago was very much the same as it had been, the twin beds and dresser. Though Mia had repainted at some point, the faint outlines of Rowen's glow-in-the-dark star stickers were still visible on the ceiling.

"Yeah," Sage said, pulling the window closed, the sheer window curtain going still. "But Mia's right that we should stick together as much as possible. Our two stray remnants are going to come looking for us, and better out here than in a crowded city street."

Rowen sat down on the bed closest to the window, and even the sound of the mattress springs contracting was familiar. "How long has it been since we bunked up in separate beds?" he asked, and punched the pillow. The sheets were freshly washed and the beds recently made, though there was an indentation on the other one where White Blaze had been napping in the afternoon sun. Sage eyed the furniture with a wistful fondness. The bedding was emerald and sapphire blue. This was Rowen and Sage's room, still, and it was what Mia had called it. Or perhaps more accurately it was Korin and Tenku's room. Would it always be, for armor-bearers yet to come, though the old armors of those names were long gone?

"Hey," Rowen said, when his question got no response. "You gonna come back to earth, or what? If you're gonna be in a stratosphere, I'd kinda like it to be mine, ya know."

"Sorry," Sage raked a hand through his hair, which fell back over one eye anyway. "I'm just not sure what we're supposed to do. I've fought my armor, remember? It healed itself. I don't know why all these years after Kikoutei I thought it would just go away."

Rowen didn't have an answer, but he stood up to put one hand on Sage's shoulder. "C'mon. Mia made sukiyaki. We'll have to get to it before Kento does."

Conversation over dinner was something closer to normal; it had been months since any of them had seen each other and almost a year since they had all been in the same place, and there was catching up to be done. Yuli and Mia complained about university politics, though as Mia's assistant Yuli had to pretend he hadn't heard her voice any dissent. Sai and Rowen got into a lively discussion on the merits and flaws of the last _Harry Potter_ novel, and Sage listened with half an ear as Kento interrogated Ryou about where he had gotten the parts to rebuild his vintage motorcycle.

Sage didn't feel left out, even if he was the least vocal of the people around the table. Mia's cooking was excellent, as always, and the happy buzz of his fellow armor-bearers' thoughts made a contented, rainbow-colored blanket fall over his worries. By the time Ryou disentangled himself from Kento, and asked Sage how things were going at the Date Dojo, Sage almost felt like himself again.

After dinner Rowen and Yuli and Mia went back to the study, Sai to fuss over something else in his pottery workshop, and Kento and Ryou to exchange knowing glances over the pile of motorcycle parts in the garage. Sage made himself a cup of tea and wandered down the path to the boat dock.

In the cooling evening, the mist coming up off of the lake was like a phantom army, rising and falling under the command of one unseen and unheard by mortals. Sage added his breath to the fog and wrapped his chilled hands around the warm, empty teacup. He knew, long before he heard the crunch of gravel on the path or the mellow creak of the dock, that Rowen was there.

"Remember that night I found you out here?" Rowen asked, his voice hushed and rough with memory, his arm warm around Sage's shoulders. His thumb traced a warm, familiar circle in the hollow of Sage's collarbone. "After New York, all alone."

"Did you think I would forget?" Sage had only a moment to arch one eyebrow before they folded into each other, with far more grace and familiarity than that first, awkward kiss. Mouths met, fingers tangled, and Sage for a moment forgot about armor and darkness, and thought only about the aching, sweet twilight where starlight met the rising day.

"Hey, get a room why don't you?"

They broke apart, but not with anything like guilt.

"Come on," Rowen shot back at Kento, returning his grin, but not letting Sage go. "Can't a guy get a little bit of action around here?"

Kento's footsteps on the dock sounded like cannon fire, echoing around the lake as Sai and Ryou emerged from the shadows of the woods behind him. "Like you need any action, Hashiba! You already scored the best ass in the entire prefecture."

"Hey!" Sai said, mock-offended.

"Sorry, sweetheart," Kento spread his hands in apology, as though if he had been in charge, assets like Sage's would have been distributed more fairly. "Not that yours ain't fine, but it's the truth."

"Well, all right, it is," Sai relented. "But you don't really have to rub it in."

Ryou said nothing, fists jammed in the pockets of his leather jacket, staring up at the lighted windows of Mia's study.

"Anyway," Kento said, as Ryou's regrets got tangled up in their own contentment, "You shouldn't be hanging out in the cold. C'mon back to the house, we'll watch a movie or game or something. I still haven't paid Ryou back for nailing my ass to the floor last time we did Guitar Hero, and if you make pretty eyes at Sai maybe he'll make some brownies."

Sai rolled his eyes. "Really Kento, you just ate! Having everyone together again is no excuse to eat so much that you can't fit into your sub armor."

"Oh?" Kento grinned, "Then let me know when it is a good time to..." He trailed off. Sai wasn't listening, his green eyes intent on something out in the middle of the lake. "Sai?"

_It's coming!_

There was no time for anything more than a telepathic warning, as a gleaming coil of blue scales erupted up from the center of the lake and smashed across the dock, sending wood fragments and bodies flying. Sai spun around in mid-air and landed, in armor, knee deep in the shallows. The cloven mist rolled back like bolts of kimono-silk, and under the clear sky five warriors faced off against a cerulean sea serpent, his eyes afire with the light of the old Suiko yoroi.

"I thought it might be here," Sai breathed, the sweep of his trident cutting a trench in the water. "Where I sent you to sleep, for a time. Come for me then, if you want me!"

The serpent stretched translucent jaws wide, displaying needle-sharp teeth, and rushed at the samurai. They scattered across the water, red and gold, blue and green, and arrows and steel rained down on the lithe monster, churning the lake water to mud.

"Damn it's fast!" Kento breathed, landing heavily near the shore, and pulling his feet free of the slushy muck. "I thought Ryou's was tough!"

Ryou himself had a comeback for that, but never got to say it as the Suiko-monster whipped its tail at both of them, flinging them out into deeper water. In the dark, blinded by the light of the creature, Sage could only guess their location from the furious steam coming off of Ryou's armor. He swung his no-datchi high, summoning the burst of energy for his attack, but was stopped by Rowen's cry of alarm.

"Are you crazy? You want to electrocute the whole damn lake?"

"I will not spend another battle being useless--"

_"Sou en zahn!"_

Flames whipped across the surface of the lake, vaporizing the top layer of water and plunging the entire battle into a thick fog bank of steam, illuminated only by the shining body of the serpent. Sai arched up, scattering lake water and mystic light like rain, and the jaws of his trident caught the creature neatly behind its head.

"Hold him there, Sai!" Ryou yelled, out of the fog. "One more shot ought to do it!"

Sai grunted as the serpent thrashed beneath him. He would not be able to hold it for long. The remnant of his armor knew his power and would not stay subdued by it, but it was not the might of the old yoroi that made Sai's hands go loose on the haft of his weapon. It was the creature's eyes, shining through the muddy water, piercing through the breast of Sai's armor and straight into his heart.

_Come back to me, Sai of the Torrent._

Terrible longing, terrible joy. Sorrow as deep and fathomless as the blackest ocean trench.

Sai withdrew his spear a fraction of a second before Ryou's attack burst forth in a second wave of fire.

"Ryou! Don't!"

Fire tore across the night, straight through the serpent's middle. It caught and burned to the ends in a second, like a party streamer kissed by a candle, and curled in on itself as it burst into blue sparks and ash, and was gone.

Sai went down in his knees in the water, his face in his hands, his cry of loss mingling with the echoes of the monster's death knell.

  


The silence in the kitchen was leaden. Sai sat on one of the barstools, mug of tea untasted in his hands, his gaze a thousand miles away. Kento had eyes only for him, radiating concern like some sort of worried hot massage stone.

"I'm sorry," Ryou said at last. "I didn't hear you until it was too late to stop."

Sai seemed to come back from wherever it was he had been, in the streets of New York, or the darkest heart of Africa. "No," he sighed. "It was better that you didn't hesitate. I'm not sure what I would have done, otherwise."

"I don't blame you," Sage said, one gentle hand on Sai's back, compassion in his frosted violet eyes. "I saw how it looked at you."

"I feel like I just killed a wild dog, only to find out it was a puppy I loved as a kid." Kento put his face in his hand, and shoved his coffee cup away from him.

"Or like one of your children," Ryou said.

Sage said, "Or your father."

"Or a lover," Sai put down his teacup, sloshing the tepid liquid on the counter, and caught Kento up in an impulsive embrace, leaning against his back.

"That armor was all those things to us," Rowen said, going to the window and looking up at the sky, as though expecting any minute for deep black wings to blot out the starlight. "We only had it for two years, really, before we got the pure yoroi from Suzunagi. And we all know it was a battle, in that tainted metal, to keep our virtues focused on it, to keep it from turning to darkness. But the truth is, that armor was part of us. It made us who we are. Suzunagi's armor is beautiful, and clean, and I can't say it's not powerful. But..."

"It's not the same," Sage murmured. "It is just armor, it is made to protect us, it is made to fight in. It's not like wearing parts of our souls on our skin."

"I dream about it sometimes," Sai admitted.

"Me too," Ryou said, and looked at his hands. "I can feel all of you pouring into me, and Kikoutei wrapping around my chest, across my face, and the heat--" His voice twisted and broke. The new armors lacked any unified form, and though none of them would admit it, they remembered the feeling of that white bond as though it had last happened yesterday, and ached for it.

"I don't think we're doing the right thing," Kento said, letting Sai have a moment to compose himself.

"I know," Sage swept their cups into the sink. "But what else can we do?"

Rowen flinched aloud, leaping back from the window a split second before every single glass pane in the kitchen shattered into a thousand pieces.

"I guess we don't have time to find out!" he shouted, armor flowing over him from bow outwards, as he took one jump from the floor and another off of nothing but air, and shot off into the sky like a comet. From outside, the air was shredded with the sound of wings, and an earsplitting cry like stars bursting into nova.

Rowen knew the others could not follow him, not for this battle. Below him, they armored up for the second time in less than an hour. Even armed they could do nothing in Rowen's element, only watch from the ground.

This fight was Rowen's alone.

He could not truly see the bird, he could only see the place where it was. Blacker than the coldest heart of space, rimed with a thin, deep blue of atmosphere, the ghost of the Tenku Yoroi was a shadow on the stars, a beating of wings and a sharp, stirring call. It went into Rowen's heart like a sudden wind on an October day, it burned in his blood like alcohol. He rose upward not to fight it, but to meet it.

"Here I am," Rowen said, his bow in his hand, but undrawn. "You know me. You've come to find me. I'm here. Now what?"

The bird was watching him, its eye a torn place in the blackness, where the stars could shine through. It keened softly as it circled him.

_Rowen_. Sage's voice didn't need the transmitters in their helmets for Rowen to hear him. _What are you doing?_

_We struck first on all the others,_ Rowen sent back, not only to Sage, but to all of them. _I thought maybe we should just ask one of them what it wants._

Sage's response was a nonverbal burst of disbelief, but he could not deny that after that first explosion of energy, the bird had not moved to attack again.

"You're just trying to get our attention, right?" Rowen asked, turning slowly in the air as the bird orbited him like a tattered moon. "What is it you're looking for?"

_You._

Rowen shivered. He knew that voice. When he had first learned his attack, the voice of the yoroi prompted him with the words, until Rowen no longer needed the help.

"Okay, me. Is that all?"

The bird blinked at him. _The others._

Rowen blinked back. "They're down there. We're all here, so why are you--"

_My others._

Comprehension dawned, and Rowen realized the reason for the terrible sadness in the creature's hollow eyes. "You're looking for... the other armors?"

_Yes._ The bird's wings arched up as it glided around him, falling very slowly. _Where are they?_

"Uh." Rowen began. "We, um. We kinda--"

_I see. It is our fate to be broken, to be scattered, to rejoin only to be broken again in turn. We are One, and always will we strive to be. In you, in the white armor, we knew what it was to be whole. Do you not seek the same? Are you not like us, the same souls, only always armored in flesh?_

Rowen looked down. Below him, the upturned faces of his friends were watching, listening. For a moment time folded in on itself and their colors were brighter, flying upwards towards Ryou, burning towards that moment when the outlines of their bodies lost meaning, spirits forged into one pure white light.

Almost always, Rowen had been the first to suggest calling the white armor. In Africa, that guilt had eaten at him. Had he, in his eagerness for that bond, urged Kikoutei to battles it should not have fought? Had he contributed to the white armor's bloodlust?

_Kikoutei had no more bloodlust than any of the single armors_ , the bird reminded him. _It met the battles presented to it, as we did under your call. Nothing more. You know this. The whole armor was the same as the whole of its bearers: the same light, the same darkness. You too, unite, and break, and unite again. Do you not?_

There was a hundred feet of distance between Rowen and Sage, but Rowen knew the look in Sage's eyes as though they were standing side by side.

"What do we need to do?" Rowen asked. "Tell us."

_Where the others have gone, I must follow. Send me there, as you did them. To our birthplace, to our Netherworld._

"Won't you just come here again?"

_We cannot do anything else. We are no longer bound to armor, but strive to be whole. If you would seek us, seek us there. Now, guard yourself!_ The bird checked, hovering, and then plunged downward at its former master. Rowen dodged at the last moment, kicking away on nothing, summoning arrows to his hand. The bird's beak closed on nothing, and if it could have smiled, turning back to attack again, Rowen thought it would have.

His arrows sang through the air but tangled uselessly in the bird's wings, scattering the missiles and their golden light. It collided hard with Rowen, knocking them apart, and circled again to strike. Rowen didn't blame it, and sensed no malice in the attack. He would want to go out fighting, too.

_Sage_ , Rowen thought, reaching out for the greenlit soul he knew best, trying not to think about how it must feel to be bodiless, empty and scattered. _I can't bring it down. I need your help._

Sage's sword gleamed with a light all its own. _It's an honor._

The bird flung its wings wide, talons as sharp as a midwinter shadow, and it seemed to Rowen that the bird intentionally left its chest bare. A pillar of lightning crackled up from the ground, bursting from Sage's sword, and it speared through the intangible heart of his lost armor. For a moment, Rowen thought it had pierced him, as well. His chest was too tight, his eyes were burning.

_Seek us there, Rowen of the Heavens._

The bird burst into phantom feathers, which lingered for a moment in the wind and in Rowen's hands before fading away into the open sky.

And Rowen slowly returned to the ground, and to the waiting arms of his friends.


	3. Chapter 3

Yuli was sweeping up the glass when they came back into the kitchen, and Mia had made another pot of coffee. 

"Sorry, Mia," Rowen said, falling into a chair with what he hoped looked like physical exhaustion, and not the numbing pain he felt in his heart. "I guess we're still ruining your insurance premiums even after all this time." 

"I've given up on insurance," Mia said airily, and helped Yuli dump most of the back door windows into the trash can. "They just laughed when I went in the office, anyway. Now whenever something breaks, I just sell an artifact and put the extra in the fund." 

"And then she buys herself a new pair of completely impractical shoes as compensation," Yuli added. His grin faded into a look of quiet wonder that he did not bother to hide, as Rowen's mystical armor dissipated and became jeans and t-shirt once more. "That was the last one, wasn't it?" he asked, sweeping harder to as though to brush away his own envy. 

"I want some of that coffee," Ryou said, in answer, and Mia passed him a cup without meeting his eyes. 

"What are you going to do now?" she asked. 

"Suzunagi can't help us with this," Ryou said, draining his boiling-hot coffee at one go, without so much as a flinch at a scalded tongue. "The armors we have now aren't connected to the Netherworld. They're only shapes to channel the energy the original yoroi left in our bodies."

"And to keep us in one piece during our regularly scheduled clashes with the forces of darkness," Kento yawned, stretching. 

"She's not the hands-on sort anyway," Sai added. "We haven't seen her since we took on this armor." 

"Because she has faded from this world, as she should have long ago." Sage sat down heavily, as though the weight of his armor was still on him. "It's our old armor that's the problem now, and only the ancient one could have the answers we need." 

"Too bad he never answers his email." Rowen's attempt to lighten the mood was a complete failure, and he stared instead at a fragment of glass next to the toe of his sneaker.

Mia twisted a dishcloth in her hands and said, "Kayura, then." 

Ryou nodded. "She's the next best thing to Kaos, now. The gates to the Netherworld are closed, but there are still a couple of places that are thinner, places that were torn open and closed a lot. I think we can punch through if we try one of them." 

"Fine, but for heaven's sake, do it in the morning." Mia looked them over and shook her head in dismay. "You look half-dead as it is. If you tried to go charging into the Netherworld now, you might just kill yourselves. Yuli and I can finish up down here. Go on up to bed and try to get some rest for now." 

Sai paused long enough to murmur thank you to Mia and drop a kiss on her cheek, an utterly platonic gesture of affection that Ryou did not even attempt to mimic. Sai and the others could get away with things like that around Mia, complimenting her on her hairstyle, hugging her, asking after her favorite takarasinne. For a moment Ryou was envious of how easily they could touch her, their brotherly affection, but he let it go with the same resigned familiarity as Yuli's unashamed longing for armor.

The others departed in pairs for their shared bedrooms, and Ryou for his, with its one poignantly empty bed. He left the kitchen last, his murmured goodnight and Mia's answer lost as Yuli began to sweep the already-clean floor. 

  


Ryou went to bed hoping for some dream of Kaos' wisdom, or even nightmares from his first days in armor: darkened cities, ruined buildings, the vibrations from the tread of giant armored feet. In the end his fitful sleep was plagued only with half-memory repeats of the not-fight he had with Mia two months after they came back from Tanzania, when he realized that without his armor he had no identity to call his own--and none that he could offer her. 

It was not the end of a relationship, he told her--and himself--at the time. It was simply that the relationship had involved two different people than the ones that they had become, the ones that had grown up, and grown apart. Without the armor, everything they had in common and every reason they had to be together had become a thing of past tense. It was a bad idea anyway, Ryou had said, wondering why she wouldn't look up at him, why she could only sit there over her cold tea, nodding. Now that the fighting was over they had ordinary lives to pick up again. Mia had a degree to finish, and scholarly aspirations. Ryou was barely starting college. Her three years' seniority in age was nothing to her French sensibilities, but it was scandalous in Japan, and her university peers had always said it would look bad for her, applying for a doctorate while living with a younger man.

It wouldn't work anymore, Ryou said. It never had. It had just been convenient for both of them, while he was an armor-bearer, and she was their researcher. They just had to admit that, that was all. It was better this way. 

Mia never said anything. Ryou left his spare key next to her teacup, touched her shoulder, and walked away.

That was all of the reality, but in the dream, she called back to him, in the dream, he turned around, in the dream, everything was different. He returned for her a year later, an armor-bearer once more, a whole man with a purpose, and swept her up into his arms. He asked her forgiveness. She promised to never let go. The dream was everything except the truth of them: Ryou's failure to carry on a relationship with anyone other than his fellow armor-bearers, and the cautious friendship they had so carefully rebuilt over the years. When the lies of his subconscious became too farfetched Ryou would rouse himself, then fall back into the dream again. 

He woke up for the last time in the watery early light of an unrepentantly nasty morning, with cold rain thudding like bullets on the foggy window. White Blaze had just put a chilly, wet tiger-nose right into Ryou's ear, and when Ryou was done yelping he sighed and fisted his hands in the thick white ruff, scratching the tiger behind his jaw. 

"You're a hell of an alarm clock, you know that." 

White Blaze said nothing, but looking into those fathomless eyes, Ryou was somehow comforted. He scooted his feet into his slippers and padded down the stairs to the study. 

"...was over fifteen damn years ago, dammit," Yuli was saying. Ryou thought he was bewailing the time that had passed since they had last contacted the Netherworld, but it was nothing so mystical. "They were just kids. Can't he see she still cares about him?"

Ryou hesitated, his back to the wall, to listen. 

"This is Ryou we're talking about." Sai. "I'm sure he's not willing to risk making things worse--" 

"Making things worse," Yuli interrupted, with a snort. "Right. Holding each other at arm's length all this time, rather than admitting it was a bad start and trying again. I don't see how it could be much worse." 

Kento, this time. "Hey, you were pretty little back then, when that all went down. You probably don't even know how much of a mess that was. It made such a hole in everything, on top of the armor loss, when we couldn't even look at each other for a year. We all four had to be captured in Suzunagi's armor before Ryou broke down and called Mia. She was his last option. And when Mia couldn't help, that was it. Ryou didn't come to Suzunagi to save us, Yul. He came to _join_ us. Because he'd realized he had nothing left, and he might as well leave his soul locked in a box with ours forever." 

"I think part of it is still there," Sai murmured. 

"Like I said. At least they're talking to each other," Kento added. 

Yuli was unmoved. "They should be _sleeping_ together." 

Ryou, in spite of himself, felt the ghost of a smile. They were about to enter the Netherworld again, the fate of the old armor was still unknown, there was the possibility that the constant fighting could begin again, and his friends were mostly concerned with whether or not he was getting laid. He turned to enter the room and then froze. Directly across the open doorway, Mia was standing on the opposite side of the hall, listening in like he was. She looked like she had barely slept, her hair in a loose braid, papers clutched in a haphazard pile against her sweater. Her smile was as fragile as the dawn struggling to assert itself outside, and it brought Ryou's heart into his throat. 

Ryou knew he should say something. He should smile, or say her name, or offer to take her books for her. But the moment spiraled out until it grew so thin that it could no longer stay together, and dissolved. With an apologetic noise Mia stepped into the study, brushing by him with her eyes lowered, and Ryou's clenched fist thumped uselessly into the wall behind him. 

"Jun Ulysses Yamano!" Mia snapped, as if she had just walked by and heard them talking about her. Yuli cringed audibly. "I really don't think that has anything to do with what needs to get done today, does it?" 

"No ma'am," Yuli muttered, and Kento coughed sheepishly while a wild staccato of Yuli's keystrokes filled in the awkward silence.

Ryou didn't know how long he stood there, his eyes closed as he listened to the too-loud busy noise in the study and the rain thumping grimly on the roof. When he opened his eyes, Sage was staring at him. 

The startled noise Ryou made was less than dignified.

"It's all right, you know," Sage said, with one arched eyebrow for their leader's lack of grace. "It's safe to go in and everything." 

"Someone ought to put a bell around your neck," Ryou grumbled, massaging his chest and trying to get his heart rate back to normal.

Rowen popped up out of nowhere behind Sage, grinning like a jack-in-the-box. "Only at Christmastime," he said. 

Ryou made a gagging noise that was pretty much entirely feigned, and walked into the study at last. It could have been his imagination, but he thought everyone glanced up at him, and then went back to whatever they were doing with a kind of frenetic energy. Rowen sidestepped him and slung a length of heavy electronic cable off one arm. Ryou always wondered where he got all the stuff like that. He seemed to have an inexhaustible supply. 

"Are we all set, or what?" Ryou asked.

"Almost," Yuli said, thumbing his return key with a kind of finality. "Rowen, are you sure this will work?" 

"No," Rowen said, stripping rubber wire casing away with his pocketknife and twisting naked copper filaments together. "But hopefully if we do wind up in the Netherworld, an open line of communication back here would help. Hand me that electrical tape, Sage. No, that's duct tape. The little black-- yes. Thanks." 

Sage gave the twisted mass of electronics a look that contained a touch of personal vehemence. Rowen had first had the idea of hardwiring mystic gear back in Los Angeles, when Sage and his armor had been technologically chained into a computer. The transmitters were useful, even Sage would admit, but he found the visceral knots of wire distasteful in memory, if nothing else. 

Yuli was dubious as he eyed the patchwork tangle of cables and transmitter box that had been jimmied into the back of his laptop via the USB port. "All right, but there's only a few shots of juice in here, so don't do it for anything short of dire, all right? Mia and I will be here in turns all the time, so if you need us, call." 

"That's it, then," Sai said, hugging himself a little. "We're ready." 

"As we're ever gonna be." Kento had a wolfish grin of anticipation, itching for a fight, as always. "Where are we going through, Ryou?" 

"At the road cutting, down by the spring where we ran into Saranbou." Ryou's eyes flickered with memory. "Shinjuku is probably an easier place to get through, it's been opened up so much, but it's too crowded." 

"Right," Rowen agreed. "We don't want Mia to have more explaining to do to the UN security council, right?" 

Mia's smile was wan. "You're just lucky they allowed me to keep your identities secret." 

"Ruining all our chances for a tabloid career," Kento laughed. "Well, keep an eye on the place, Yul." 

"Tell everyone..." Mia made a face. "Tell everyone hello, I guess? How ridiculous that sounds! And be careful." She said it to all of them, but her eyes were on Ryou. 

"I'm sure they'll be hanging out and drinking sake with nothing to do," Sage said. "You haven't got a thing to worry about." 

  


"You really don't believe that, do you?" Rowen asked Sage, when they were safely out on the porch. 

"Of course I don't." Sage stepped out from under the porch overhang and into his armor, transitioning into white and black and green with only a ripple of energy. The need for shouted armor calls was long past. "It's been almost twenty years in our world, who knows how much time has passed there? The Netherworld is hardly a place of peace and serenity. Kayura and the Warlords said they would build a new world there, but they'd have plenty of enemies to go around. They might have won by now, or they might be still fighting. Or they might be dead. It's better to assume it won't be safe." 

"Don't be such a misery, Sage." Sai lifted his hands to the sky, the rain running in happy little streams along all the flutes and metal canyons of his armor, plinking joyfully down the crest of his helmet. "I have full confidence that they have achieved the dream of a peaceful world." 

"Sorry Sai." Ryou spread his arms and for a moment flame licked over his arms and legs with a sound like a gas fireplace igniting, leaving him wrapped in white metal and crimson silk. "I'm with Sage on this one." 

Sai shrugged, unperturbed. "Shall we go, then?" 

"I dunno," Kento said, even as they were enveloped in light and shot towards their destination a few miles down the road, "What kind of hostess present do you get for a former dark warlord?" 

  


It was raining harder at the roadside spring. Sai seemed to relish it while the others endured the annoyance drumming onto their helmets and shoulder-plates, but Ryou's armor evaporated the droplets just before they could land, making him smoke like a restless volcano. Damp surcoats swished around their knees in an uneasy wind. 

"Good choice, Ryou," Rowen said, as all the leaves flipped up to show their undersides to the wind. A day before, the leaf cover had been thicker, now the wind had shredded most of the gold and red glory, leaving bare branches behind. A normal mortal would have found the bend in the road a little forbidding. For armor-bearers, it rippled with otherworldly potential. 

"I never felt like it healed up quite right, here." Ryou put his hand to a place on the road cutting, covered now by vines, where the scored marks of hot wildfire blades were still faintly visible. "I guess that's a good thing." 

"So, what do we do?" Kento wondered. "...Knock? Send them a text message? 'R0n1ns hr, u opn gat3 4us plz'?" 

"I don't think it's anything that complicated," Sai said, and Ryou nodded. 

"We just ask." Ryou's armor pulsed a dull red, liming the edges of his body, illuminating the shadows under his eyelashes. As one, the others followed his example, gleaming faintly through the rain in a dim rainbow, the combined energy like the vibration of a taiko drum whose actual sound was just out of hearing. 

Calling out for each other was second nature. Calling out for the brethren of their lost armor, with only the lingering virtues to guide them, was somewhat more difficult. Cold rain mingled with beads of sweat on their faces as they concentrated, straining, for voices they had once dreaded to hear. 

"There!" Sage gasped at last, his face pale above his throat guard. 

Wavering like a mirage beyond the opposite guard rail, the red pilings of a netherworld gate appeared and flickered, then grew solid once more. A thin thread of golden light sliced down the massive doors and all of them shifted stance, hands tightening on sword hilt and spear haft and arrow, braced for battle. A flash of armor glinted in the aperture, and with the jangle of a ringed staff and her hair like a pennant behind her, Lady Kayura stepped down onto the asphalt of the highway. The Oni armor glinted faintly in the rain, and Ryou's greeting died in his throat as he saw the bright smears of blood on the breastplate, the fine surcoat muddied and torn. She wore no helmet, and a thin cut was fresh on one cheek. She leaned heavily on the staff of the ancients, as though glad for the support. 

"You've heard us!" Kayura said, catching Ryou's wrist in her hand, her eyes shining with exhausted gratitude. "Quickly, while there is still time!" 

"Wha--" Ryou began, but Sage overrode his bewildered protest. 

"You are injured, Lady Kayura." 

"I have no time for such things," Kayura said, tossing her head with something like her old pride. "Not while I still stand. Please, warriors. Your haste may yet save lives." 

Ryou nodded. "Our swords are yours." 

"This way." Kayura brought the staff down, splintering the ground, and the gates yawned wide to let them in. The pull of the staff's power banished gravity, wrapping them up in baubles of colored light and carrying them from one world to the next. The ponderous gate swung closed behind them, and vanished. 

Of the five of them, only Kento had entered the Netherworld this way, through the gate and fully conscious. One massive gate led to another, and another, with no walls or any sort of barrier between them. Far beyond their staggered beams, the beauty of the Netherworld rolled away below them like delicate ink lines painted on a gold screen, a floating, timeless world made miniature with distance. The dominating shadow of Arago's castle had lost none of its awe, but in its shadow the tangled labyrinth had become a warren of houses and streets and gardens. So caught up in the view, the warriors almost failed to notice the raw, black shadow gnawing on the edges of the gilt serenity. 

"It's an army," Sai breathed, his eyes going wide at the overwhelming number of bodies. 

"Not all have been pleased with the demise of the Lord of the Netherworld," Kayura explained. "Before Arago's might forced them into an empire, the Netherworld was a collection of small territories, much like the warring states of your own past. Now, every petty warlord and greedy demon in the Netherworld seeks dominion over the others." Her grip tightened on the staff, her dark brows drawn together. "And for that, they seek to fell my generals. I pray we are not too late. The hour was grim already when I came to fetch you." 

"Kayura," Rowen said, shifting as though he would like to come up alongside her, but under the power of the staff such fidgets were impossible. He could only turn in his dark blue bubble to peer into her golden one. "We came to ask _your_ help. We didn't know you were in trouble."

"If you sent out a call to our old armors," Sage said, gesturing to his breastplate, "we wouldn't have heard it." 

"Then it is true, that the old armors have been destroyed." Kayura tightened her grasp on the staff, as through worried it might be wrested from her. "We thought you dead, you know, when the ghosts of your armors came here years ago, shattered fragments of your spirit and seeking the staff. In our latest desperation we called anyway and prayed you would hear us." She glanced back to study them, her dark eyes appraising their armor, their older faces. "Regardless, I see that fate has brought you back here, and you have managed to find yourselves some new armor, soulless though it may be." 

"It's kind of a long story," Ryou explained, trying not to flinch at their new armor being so callously dismissed. It stung enough that Kayura had been desperately calling for their aid, and they had not heard so much as a whisper. 

They were gathering speed, arching down towards the battle below. The dark blur of clashing forces became more focused; they could pick out armored individuals among the mass. "Then pray you have a chance to tell it to me," Kayura said, and with the final instruction, "all in black armor are the enemy," they were in the thick of it. 

It was utter chaos. Allies, if they had any, were not to be found. The sweep of Kayura's staff scattered armor and foul smoke in every direction, but there were always more soldiers to fill the gaps, like blood from a wound that refused to clot. Ryou found himself hard pressed almost at once, thrust into a kind of melee combat he had not known since he was fifteen years old. The army was comprised of empty suits of armor, as Arago's foot soldiers had been, and only dismemberment would bring them down. 

"Show no mercy!" Kayura shouted over the din, laying waste with the staff. "They will give you none! If you fall, your soul will swell their ranks!" 

Somewhere off to Ryou's left, there was a tremor of the ground and a wave of armored bodies flew high in the air; Kento's triumphant whoop echoing off the rooftops. 

_This is way better than bowling!_

"Don't get too far ahead, Kento!" Ryou shouted, but Kayura was pressing the advantage Kento left in his wake. 

"This way!" She called, and they left their battles to follow her. 

For Sage, the landscape of the Netherworld was a conglomeration of all his dreams, a place he never expected to find himself in again. It was seasonless on the outskirts of the city, but colder than Sage remembered it, the unrelenting kind that sank deep into the bone. Half-familiar doorways and streets flickered by as they ran, like whispered words he could almost understand. Their progress was much faster than Kayura's could have been alone, as one of them would let loose a burst of energy when the way became blocked, allowing her to plunge ahead. Sage could not help noticing that while the staff of the ancients never missed its mark, it did not have the same raw power as their own weapons. He wondered why Kayura did not make use of the Oni Yoroi's chain and claw, or in lieu of that, transform the staff into the sword, the fighting half of its dual nature.

Before he drew any conclusive answers, they had burst through a ring of the toughest soldiers yet and into the company of a few embattled humans, clearly at the end of their strength and dressed in armor that was nothing but metal. Out of the corner of his eye, Sage glimpsed one of them falling to his foe, blood spattering across the trampled grass. Before the dead man's eyes had even begun to dull, the fragmented armor on the ground quivered and formed itself into a new phantom soldier, burning eyes devoid of emotion as he turned to slaughter his former friends. 

"There are humans in the Netherworld?" Rowen gasped, horrified even as he kept loosing arrows into the black wall of foot soldiers. 

"I told you that once long ago, Tenku," Kayura said. "Most of them joined our side after Arago's defeat, but those that are slain are lost to us." She lifted her voice, raising her staff above her head so that the gold rings could be clearly seen. "Fall back to the castle, all of you!" she shouted. "Do not give the enemy your lives!" 

The human soldiers did as they were told, carrying their wounded back through the path Kayura had made. 

"Quickly, now," Kayura said, waving them forward. "We press on." 

"If I knew I was going to do this much jogging," Kento grunted, "I would have eaten less breakfast." 

They left a swath of destruction all around them, shouting their sure-kills more times in that one hour than they had in the entire past year. Sage electrified a hail of Rowen's arrows into a vast explosive net, while Kento and Sai gave their foes a new and profound respect for mud. Ryou's bursts of flame left nothing, not even armor, behind. Slowly, it seemed that the gaps they made were not as quickly filled as they had been. 

"I think it's getting a little better!" Sai said, half a second before a soldier's pike caught him right across his middle, sending him flying. His blood scattered in a fine mist across the white shoulders of Kento's surcoat. He landed some distance away in a small defeated heap, and did not move. 

"Sai!" Kento screamed, his shock and fear jolting through all the others. " _Sai!_ " 

Sai's mental response was weak and wordless, but alive. 

It did not grant mercy for the remaining soldiers, left to face the wrath of Kento of Hardrock. His will flattened the entire area, the ground rippling and buckling like a shaken blanket, slapping trees, buildings, and the unfortunate soldiers away in an earthen tide until only his friends remained standing. Souls dispersed from the armor in a vast cloud. 

Sage was already running to Sai before the last of the dust dissipated. In the haze, he could just see Sai's limp form in the shadow of a ruined wall, an armored figure leaning ominously over him. Sage made a flying leap and found his path blocked by a lone warrior, steel ringing on steel as their swords collided. 

"Out of my way!" Sage bellowed, sword hilts grinding together, his arms straining against the strongest foe he had clashed with yet that day. 

"...Halo?"

Slowly, the smoke of stagnant souls began to clear. Sage's opponent wore dun-colored armor with no helmet, one eye deeply scarred, crimson cloak snapping behind him in the bitter wind. 

"Anubisu!" 

Shajuko rings jangled behind Sage as Kayura caught up; the warlord of darkness immediately stepped back and lowered his sword, bowing to her. "My lady. It is a worthless general who needs such a rescue. You would be right to cut off my head right here." 

"Be quiet, Anubisu," Kayura snapped, but there was relief in her eyes. "I trust the other two have not died simply to spare me the trouble of scolding them?" 

"Naaza is tending to Torrent," the jackal said, gesturing to Sai, and the other warrior whose outline was now familiar. "Rajura... I cannot say, save that he lives. His wounds were many." 

"Take me to them at once," Kayura said. "The demon army is in retreat; we must get back to the castle." 

Anubisu bowed again with a short bark of obedience, and left a baffled Sage of Halo standing, sword still drawn, behind him.


	4. Chapter 4

When Sai woke up it was someplace warm and shadowy that smelled faintly of lamp oil, old incense, and tatami mats. His armor was gone and he was lying across a futon, his torso a white swath of bandages. Someone was in the room with him, his presence an almost-familiar shadow on Sai's mind. 

"Good," he said. "It will be easier if you are awake." 

Sai shuddered, on old instinct. He knew that Naaza was no longer his enemy, but Sai had precious few memories of the Doku Masho that did not involve his own imminent death. Sai tried to go up to his elbows, winced as pain shot across his abdomen, and fell back down again.

Naaza might have arched an eyebrow at him, if he had them. "I do not think so highly of this new fine armor of yours, Torrent, if it cannot even be trusted to keep your entrails inside your belly." 

"It was a lucky shot," Sai hissed, trying not to recoil as Nazaa bent over him, drawing his bare hand over the bandages. The warlord was dressed in kimono, and the sight of his unarmored fingers and throat was almost indecent. "Where are my friends?" It took a conscious effort on his part not to ask, _What have you done with them?_

"In council with Lady Kayura," Naaza replied. "You may join them when I'm done knitting you whole again." 

"You?" Sai stammered, unable to keep the incredulous tone out of his voice. He got no further as a cry of pain sounded from the opposite corner of the room. Naaza rushed over without any explanation, and the crisp silk pleats of his hakama rustled as he knelt down by the other bed. The lantern closest to him sprang to life, and Sai flinched not for his own wounds, but for what the magical flame revealed.

The warlord of illusion lay sprawled in the opposite futon, his cobweb-pale hair matted with blood, his body more bandages than skin. The blood had soaked through most of them, their crimson patterns a terrible history of the injuries beneath. Rajura's face was drawn taut with pain, sweat made a thin sheen on his lip and wet the lashes of his one good eye. Naaza put the back of his hand to his comrade's forehead, and swore with a phrase so archaic that Sai barely understood it to be Japanese.

"Fetch Halo to me," he said, and Sai blinked, wondering if Naaza was speaking to him. Before he could ask, a tiny light appeared in the center of the room and zipped away through one of the closed paper doors. 

A moment later there was the padding of tabi-clad footsteps in the hall, and Sage pushed back the door. He too had traded his armor for more traditional Japanese garb, though it was simpler than Naaza's. From the look on his face, he had understood the urgency of the message. Sage spared Sai a quick, reassuring smile, and hurried to Rajura's bedside. 

"He has gotten worse," Naaza said, in flat tones that belied the weight of his words. "He is slipping away, and not bothering to fight it. Hold him together for me, if you can." 

"I understand," Sage said, and Sai forgot the sting of his own cut as he watched the strange juxtaposition of Sage and their former enemies. Sage put a hand to Rajura's forehead, and on his own the mark of his virtue stirred. He closed his eyes, eyebrows drawn in concentration. There was a vague humming in the air, like the air before a thunderstorm, and Sai knew that at that moment Sage's innate grace was the only thing holding Rajura's soul inside his mutilated body. Naaza drew the snake-hilted blade he wore at his side, and rested the tip against Rajura's parted lips. A shining drop of liquid coalesced on the point and fell, but Rajura's breath snagged in his throat and he did not swallow it. It slid down over his cheek and was wasted, staining a brighter spot in his hair. 

"He is too weak," Naaza said, and there was something stricken in his voice, like disbelief. "He cannot manage so delicate a draught."

"Can you dilute it? In a cup of water, or--" Sage reached for the sake bottle resting on the tray at Rajura's bedside, and his oath was almost a match for Naaza's earlier one. "Empty."

"Let me," Sai said, before he even realized he had shoved himself up, staggering over to them and reaching for the bottle. "Sage."

Sage pressed the bottle into Sai's shaking hand, and somewhere under the pain and urgency Sai felt a flicker of admiration for the fine craftsmanship of the pottery. Rajura convulsed under Sage's hands, and Naaza said, "Hurry, Torrent!" The light of Rajura's virtue shone weakly on his forehead, as an ember starved of oxygen and soon to extinguish.

Sai reached out to his element and found it floating loose in the air around them, tricking in a spring outside in a neglected garden. He called it to him, drawing it down into the belly of the vessel. Urgency made him clumsy, and water splashed over his fingertips before he realized he had summoned enough. "Here." He held it out, and Naaza dolled out a portion of his toxin into it, tinting the water the color of cherry blossoms. He tipped the bottle back to the wounded warlord's lips and Rajura coughed once but drank it, his throat moving, eye twitching restlessly under his eyelid. Closer now, Sai could see that the cobweb-patch had been ripped away, and the Gen Masho's most noticeable feature was a pale twist of ugly, ancient scar, marring his otherwise fine features.

Rajura choked on the last sip, spilling it, but Naaza was satisfied.

"Let him sleep, now. That will do."

Sage lowered Rajura back down. The warlord's breathing was less labored, his chest rising and falling smoothly. His virtue kanji glowed brightly and then subsided, the thin hand clenched on the coverlet relaxed. Sai was surprised to find pity in his heart, and then was ashamed that it had taken him so long.

"Alone he stood against countless foes," Naaza said, with something like admiration, "Spinning out countless illusions, pretending he had taken no blows, granting our forces an escape. Idiot." He looked up at Sai, his slit-pupiled eyes sharp. "Like you, Torrent! Standing in your condition! I've kept enough men from the gates of hell today." 

"He's got a point," Sage said, and he looped Sai's arm around his shoulder. "You're not missing anything," Sage explained, helping him back to the futon. "Ryou's been telling Lady Kayura what's happened to us since the Netherworld gates closed, is all."

"You can join the conversation soon enough," Naaza said, studying the tip of his blade. Sai wondered if he would have to swallow a dose of Naaza's poison as well, and his stomach heaved at the thought. But the warlord of autumn only laid his weapon across Sai's bandages, and the purple gleam of his venom soaked through, seeking the deep cut across Sai's ribs. Sai was braced for that familiar, burning pain, the sickly-sweet cloying of poison. He did not expect the gentle suffusion of warmth, followed by an itchy tingling. Naaza made a grunt of satisfaction, and sliced cleanly through Sai's bandages. Nothing remained of the wound but a thin, pink line of scar.

Sai stared at it, and then at Naaza, in unconcealed wonder. "Th--thank you." 

"Better a soldier to stand and fight than a corpse to be burned," Naaza said, shrugging off Sai's gratitude. "Go. I must tend to Rajura. And don't go poking at it!" 

Sai put his hand down immediately. 

Sage held out the garments that had been left out for Sai, and though Sai could have summoned the clothes he had been wearing before he armored, it only seemed polite to dress properly for the Netherworld. They left Naaza at Rajura's bedside and padded down the halls through the castle that had once been Arago's, Sai fussing with the ties of his haori. 

"Kento will be glad to see you," Sage said. "You gave us all a turn, you know." 

"Sorry," Sai said, ruefully. "I guess I'm not as sharp as I used to be."

"We're all rusty," Sage said, and Sai was grateful for that, even if he knew that Sage was not even dulled, much less rusty. "But we can't let that slow us down, right? Not in front of _them_." 

Sai laughed, glancing back the way they had come, still amazed at the changes time and freedom had wrought in his old adversary. "Right. I'm not sure I could live with myself, otherwise." 

  


It was a mark of Kento's concern how fast he got up to meet them at the door. Devotion was one thing, but there were platters of grilled fish and hot sake in the offing at Kayura's council, and the warrior of Hardrock had not touched any of his yet. 

"Damn, you gave me a scare," Kento said, taking Sai by the shoulders as Sage settled back on the cushion next to Rowen. 

"I'm fine," Sai said, batting at Kento's hands, not wanting to be fussed over with the eyes of so many--especially Anubisu and Kayura--on him. "More a blow to my pride than anything." 

"How fares Rajura?" Kayura asked Sage, doing her old opponent the honor of warming his sake with a refill. "Will he survive?" 

"Naaza seems to think so," Sage answered, accepting his saucer with a bow. "What did he do to receive such damage?" 

"Rajura has become reckless, I fear," Kayura said, putting the serving bottle aside and folding her hands tightly in her layered kimono.

"Really?" Kento settled down to his dinner at last. "Doesn't sound like the Rajura I know." 

"He was not always like this," Anubisu said, his scowl puckering the scar on his cheek. "But ever since Sh'ten--" His fist curled on his knee, and he said nothing further. Kayura looked as if she would speak, but there was something insurmountable in Anubisu's face, and she frowned at her rice, instead. 

In the awkward pause, Sage lifted his sake saucer again and said, "This is a fine vintage." 

Anubisu' expression cleared. "You think so, Halo? I supervised the brewing myself."

"Probably had peasants spitting chewed-up rice into a vat," Kento muttered to Sai, over his chopsticks.

"Now that Sai's here, maybe we can get some questions answered," Ryou said, shoving his empty plate aside and putting his elbow down on the lacquered dinner tray. In spite of his dubious manners, the ancient mode of dress suited him better than Sai would have expected. He had a brief flash of almost-memory; Ryou in the same position, one arm tucked into the loose sleeve of a red kimono, unkempt hair twisted into a rakish topknot, double katana thrust into his belt like an afterthought. Sai looked at his friends, dressed in silk like the samurai of antiquity, and wondered how long they had all truly known one another. He gave a mental apology to the elegantly arranged fish on his platter, and realized belatedly that he was starving. 

"When did this start?" Ryou continued. "Have you been fighting all this time?"

Kayura shook her head, and looked up at the staff of the Ancients, which rested upright in a bracket on the wall behind her. "For nearly ten years of your time, we were at peace. Humans like us who had been under Arago's sway for centuries came back to their senses. Rather than return to a world that had forgotten them, they remained here in the City of Dreams. For our part, we did not desire the empire Arago built, we only wished to live in peace. But to suddenly parcel up the Netherworld again would lead to disputes and fighting among demon and human alike. For the sake of insuring peace, we did not allow the empire to dissolve immediately into separate kingdoms. We thought it best for the rulers to petition for their dominions, and to draw the boundaries anew as independent states, but all under a central government here." 

Sage was nodding agreement, and Rowen had his chin in his hand, studying Kayura thoughtfully. "A miniature shogunate, then," the archer said. "Makes pretty good sense, but I bet the netherworld warlords didn't take to it right off."

Kayura made a dismissive gesture. "There was some small dissent among the demon warlords that Arago ruled, but the might of the Masho was enough to quell them and most submitted without further complaint." 

Anubisu shifted his weight on his cushion, eyes alight with fierce pride. "We can be very persuasive," he purred. 

Sage took a discreet sip of sake and made no comment.

"Okay," Ryou said, and Sai could sense his impatience, "if everything was so great, where did this army come from?" 

Kayura's eyebrows drew up into a delicate ink-scribble of concern. "We... don't know." 

"You mean you don't even know who you're fighting?" Rowen blurted, sparing Ryou the trouble of doing it instead. "And you've been doing this for ten years?" 

"Time does not run here as it does in your world, Strata." Anubisu made a curt gesture at the trees in the garden outside, which were coated in snow and ice even though it was only early fall in the human world. "The fighting has been going for as long as the fighting has been going. That is the only measure here of any importance." 

"Yeah, I noticed that," Kento said. "Like it was springtime here before, but it was springtime in our world, but now it's the middle of wintertime--" 

Sai saw the pained look on Kayura's face, and elbowed Kento in the ribs before he could say anything further. 

"We're not here to chat about the weather, Kento." Ryou was glowering. "I want to know more about this army, where they're coming from, who's commanding them, all of it." 

"A fine list," Anubisu snorted. "Do you think we have not been desperate to find out the same?" 

"There is no commander or general that we can discover," Kayura said. "We have discussed this at length, and have concluded that several of the old demon lords must have joined forces in secret. If we knew which it was, we could stop them, but as we don't--"

"It would be quicker to simply kill them all--" Anubisu grumbled, but the look Kayura shot him was enough to make him fall silent. 

"The attacks are sporadic, and vicious." Kayura said. "For some time, there will be nothing. Then we will be overwhelmed all at once. Today was exceptionally brutal; before the warlords and I were enough to subdue them. I don't understand why all at once the enemy has become stronger." 

"We'll do whatever we can to help," Ryou said, "but it would be easier if we knew who or what we were actually fighting." 

"I had hoped you would be able to help me discover that," Kayura said, bowing to Ryou in thanks. "The Jewel of Life contains the thoughts and hearts of many generations of my people. It was entrusted to your care, but if you will lend me the jewel, I can search with its powers to unravel the secret. May I see it?" 

The five warriors exchanged a glance that required no telepathy.

" _Yuli._ " 

  


The most powerful relic in the history of the ancients was, at that moment, hanging off of Yuli's cell phone, along with a tiny ultraman figure whose eyes lit up when you squeezed him. Yuli had not been extremely comfortable with the selected hiding place of the jewel, thinking maybe a box somewhere would be better, and then only if there weren't any underwater temples to be leased at reasonable rates for eternity. It had generally been decided, however, that the jewel was better kept close by at all times. When he was a child, Yuli had worn the jewel tucked carefully inside his shirt, but as he had gotten older that habit had prompted strange, vivid dreams that he could never remember on waking.

But Rowen had suggested the phone dangle idea, since Yuli was never without it, and it made the jewel just look like a cheap good luck charm. Yuli thought it was better than just carrying the jewel in his pocket, where it looked like something of importance and could more easily be lost, but sometimes he had the dreams anyway. He was prone enough to premonitions that he could dismiss them, but they still prompted an uneasiness, as though he was poised on a tall diving board above a sea of fog. 

At that moment, however, the dream Yuli was having did not involve anything more mystical than a shopping mall that was sort of like an amusement park but also a chocolate factory, and Angelina Jolie. He was just getting to the good bits, which focused on those tomb-raider-esque shorts and a vat of coconut filling, when an insistent pinging noise broke through his pleasantly-occupied REM. 

_Yuli. Mia. Anybody home?_

Yuli snorted in his sleep, batting at the annoying tiny Rowen in scuba gear who had just poked his head out of the sea of coconut, solely to ruin Yuli's fun. Laura Croft was getting pouty. "G'fzz. Wuh." 

" _Yuli!_ " 

Yuli fell through a sudden hole in his dream, and landed, with a jerk, back in his chair in the study. "Ow! Dammit..." 

_You were asleep, weren't you._ Rowen's voice said, through the laptop. _Keira?_

"Angelina," Yuli said, and grinned at Rowen's whistle of sympathy. 

_Sorry to intrude on your nap time, kid, but duty calls. Can you drive down to the spring by the highway? The Saranbo place. Mia'll know it. And bring the Jewel._

"The Jewel?" Yuli yawned. "What for? You guys in trouble?"

 _Trouble?_ Rowen repeated, and even the little wiggling line of his voice graph looked shifty. _No, of course not! We just needed the jewel for um. The armor thing. You know._

"Uh-huh." Yuli said. "The armor thing." 

_Okay fine we're in trouble but don't tell Mia. Ryou will eat me for making her worry._

Yuli glanced up at the doorway where Mia was standing, hand on her hip, one eyebrow arched. 

" _I_ won't tell her," Yuli said, grinning.

 _Good. Somebody'll be there to get the jewel from you so you can just drop it off and head back to the house and wait--_ v 

Mia made a tiny snort of disgust, and inspected the rack of antique weapons for a nice-looking naginata.

_...so make it snappy. Got that?_

Yuli pointed at the katana mounted above a tassled gilt helmet and Mia got it down for him. Yuli mouthed a 'thanks' at her that Rowen wouldn't hear. "Don't worry, we got it." 

_Great. Thanks, bud. I'm out._

The speaker crackled again and was silent. "All set?" Yuli asked.

White Blaze trotted in the door, his ageless eyes expectant, and Mia slid the sword to him across the desk, and her smile was grim. "All set."


	5. Chapter 5

"You have contacted them?" Kayura asked, sliding the screen door closed with the tips of her fingers.

Rowen put his back to the snowy garden, pulled his helmet free, and shook a hand through his hair. "They're on their way. I can go and meet them to get the jewel. We don't all have to go and leave the castle unprotected." 

"All the same, I shall accompany you," Kayura demurred. "You will need my assistance to open the gate."

Rowen studied her: small, serene, and almost insubstantial in her layered cloud of winter-colored robes, an entirely different creature than the blood-soaked warrior they had met by the roadside. In her low slippers, she barely came up to the bottom of Rowen's neck-plate.

"Something on your mind, Tenku?" Kayura prompted, and Rowen realized he'd been staring.

"Sorry, it's just... You haven't aged a day since then, have you?"

Kayura seemed startled by the question. Her painted eyes widened in shock and surprise, then she turned her face away, veiling her expression with the shining black curtain of her hair. "When Arago ruled," she said, hesitatingly, "this land was trapped in an eternal spring, the season of the samurai, the season of his favorite warrior. After Arago's defeat, summer came for the first time in centuries. It lasted a long time, and was followed by an equally lengthy and bountiful autumn. Our storehouses were full to overflowing, and it was well that they were. For winter followed fall, and it has reigned, unrelenting, for ten times as long as the other seasons. Our food supplies dwindle, but Spring does not come, and we do not age." She put her face in her hands, her slim shoulders bowed. "I am not Sh'ten, Tenku. His armor suffers me to wear it, but little more. I cannot bring spring back to the Netherworld. It is gone, and I fear it will not come again. Even should we prove victorious in this battle, we are doomed to a winter without end."

Rowen reached out a hesitant hand and placed it on her shoulder, his armored fingers gleaming through her hair. "We'll find an answer," he said, though he wasn't sure himself what it could be. "Spring'll come back, and it'll be just like Narnia, you know?"

"Like what?" Kayura asked, her grief changing to confusion.

"Ehh," Rowen said. "Nevermind."

Kayura gave him a soft, sad little smile. "How strange we must seem to you, as much as you to us. When last we met, you were little more than children."

Rowen would have said that Kayura had been little more than a child herself, a stolen doll pulled along by Arago's phantom fingertips. But before Rowen could speak, Kayura leaned up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek, like a little girl greeting a favorite older brother.

"Now, you seem so much older than we are, and still so much more alive."

"Only because you've been stuck in time so long," Rowen said, glad for the chilly air to excuse the flare of color across his face. "You guys feel old to us, just... in a different way. Historically, I guess."

"I don't know. You always seemed more alive to me. Brighter than us, your blood hotter. The five of you always fought with such relentless fury, but fighting beside you today, I saw you not as boys in the fire of youth, but as seasoned warriors, wise in your elements and sharp in your skills. Your blood is still hot, hotter than ours, but time has given you the will to temper it. You have grown in the time that has passed, and we here have been left behind, unchanged." She looked at the garden, at the spreading branches of the cherry trees, black against snow and refusing to bloom. "It made me feel strange, realizing just how much mortal time has passed the Netherworld by."

"I don't know about wise, but I feel pretty damn old when I look at the mirror in the every morning." Rowen flashed her a grin; her compliments had stung more blood into his face than her kiss had. "Don't worry about it. When things get back to normal here, and your seasons are in order, it won't feel that way."

"Maybe that's true," Kayura said, and put her fingertips to her lips, to hide her laugh. "Because you look much like that little boy I fought years ago when you're blushing."

"Who's blushing?" Rowen demanded, and put his helmet back on in a hurry. "Anyway. We should go and meet Yuli. The sooner we get the jewel, the sooner we can help you get things right again."

  


"Come over and drop off the Jewel, my ass," Yuli said, opening the door of the jeep and letting a slightly carsick tiger out of the back seat. "I'm surprised he didn't ask for us to deliver a pizza while we're at it."

"If Kento had been the one to call, he would have." Mia wrapped her arms around the haft of her naginata, and hugged herself through the thin leather of her jacket. It had stopped raining, though enough water still dribbled off the trees to spatter across the hood of the parked jeep, and it was deeply chilly. The air smelled of wet rock and wet road and wet trees, and of something musty and electrically smoky that Mia and Yuli knew all too well: the scent of stale souls imprisoned in armor.

"Like we wouldn't know that there was trouble brewing," Yuli continued, and there was a faint bitterness to his words. "Maybe we don't have mystic armor, but we're not stupid, and we've been doing this every bit as long as they have."

Mia gave him a smile he did not see, thinking to herself how he still struggled for equality in the eyes of the others, and especially Ryou. She could empathize with that, at least. Ryou was not an easy man to love, and he would be the first to admit it. "Well," she said, "we're not going to toddle off home like good sidekicks this time, are we?"

Yuli grinned at her over his shoulder, one hand on the hilt of the katana shoved through the belt of his jeans. "When have we ever?"

White Blaze made a low whurf of agreement, and butted his broad head against Yuli's thighs. Still, Mia could not help the flutter of nerves low in her belly when the vast, red torii gate appeared out of the mist, ominous and familiar, the sharp horns of its top beam lost in the clouds. Two figures emerged from the widening crack in its maw, and a moment later Rowen and Kayura lighted on the pavement. Mia glanced beyond them for a flash of crimson armor, but no one else was coming.

_Coward._ she thought to herself, uncharitably. _Are you afraid you'll lose your nerve to go off and die if you see me?_

"Thanks for coming so fast," Rowen said, clanking across the road to Yuli. "We'll just get the jewel and get outta your hair--"

"Rowen Hashiba," Mia said, more steely than the point of her spear, "Do you honestly think we're going to let you go back in there alone?"

"I ain't alone," Rowen said, with an impatient gesture at Kayura, in the oni armor, with her staff at the ready. "In case you hadn't noticed."

"Of course I noticed," Mia said, and turned to Kayura with a warm smile and an outstretched hand. "It's so nice to see you again."

"I hope you've been well," Kayura returned, equally polite.

"All the same," Mia said, whirling on Rowen again once the pleasantries were done, "The five of you haven't ever managed to accomplish anything without us, and I don't see what point there is in leaving us here. You _need_ us, and you always have."

"Mia, please," Rowen said, his eyes flicking to Kayura. "Not in front of--"

"You don't get the jewel unless you bring us with you," Yuli said, evenly. "Not to be difficult, Lady Kayura," he said, with an apologetic shrug in her direction, "but we're coming with you."

Kayura blinked at him in sudden recognition, replacing the grown man before her with the boy in her memories. "Yuli! Time _has_ passed in the mortal world, hasn't it?" She shook her head. "Still, I must agree with Tenku. The Netherworld is at war, and bringing civilians into it is out of the question."

Mia tightened her grip on her spear, meaningfully. "I haven't been a civilian since before I was twenty."

"Mia," Rowen said, squinting with frustration, "can I talk to you over here, just a sec?" He took her elbow in his gauntleted hand, and led her a little ways behind the jeep, next to the mountain spring in the cliffside.

"Rowen," Mia said, before he could start, "you're not talking me out of this."

"There's no talking about it," Rowen answered. "Listen, Mia. I'm second-in-command, and I've got my orders from Ryou. If I bring you back with me, he'll kill me."

"So he wants to leave me here while all of you go off and die, then," Mia retorted.

" _Yes_ ," Rowen answered, with emphasis. "Mia, it doesn't look good over there. We've got crap odds and it's a losing battle. I promised Ryou I would make sure you stayed here where it's safe."

"And if you lose?" Mia said, catching the side of Rowen's helmet and making him look her in the eye. "If you lose, and the Netherworld gates come open, and all hell breaks loose in the mortal world? Where's going to be 'safe' then, Rowen?"

"He loves you more than anything in the world, Mia," Rowen said softly, startling tears into Mia's wide green eyes. "It would tear him apart if you were there. He would want to protect you, and he knows he can't."

Mia spent a moment to compose herself, swallowing. "I'm not a little girl anymore, Rowen," she said, when she trusted herself to speak. "I can defend myself, now. And I'll have Yuli with me, if you have to insist on me having a big strong boy to look after me." White Blaze appeared around the corner of the Jeep, and butted Rowen hard in his armored backside. "And a tiger," Mia concluded. "Seriously, an all-Japan kendo champ and an immortal tiger, I mean, what else would I need?"

Rowen took her by both shoulders. "I know you can fight, but it's not a matter of you being strong enough. We might _all_ die."

"And you think only armor-bearers deserve to die beside the ones they love?"

Rowen flinched; Mia had struck home.

"It's not just Ryou's choice, Rowen," Mia said.

"I've got orders--"

"Ryou," Mia interrupted, "cannot order _me_ to do anything." Her eyes narrowed. "I'm not one of you, remember?"

Rowen's shoulders slumped, but he laughed in his defeat. "You've always been one of us," he said. "But you're right, none of us could ever make you do anything you don't want to do." He changed his grip on her shoulders into a hug, and she wrapped one arm around his backplate. Hugging men in mystic armor was a tricky prospect, but she was a pro at it by now, and could manage even with her naginata.

"Just do us all a favor," Rowen continued, pulling away, "and if Ryou lives through this, just marry the son of a bitch, will ya?"

Mia's lower lip twitched, but she held firm. "He has to _ask_ me first."

"Babe," Rowen said, turning around, "You know the man's as dumb as a bag of bricks. If you want him, you're gonna hafta club him over the head, or something." He glanced back at the Netherworld gate, and sighed. "But at this rate, you might need to take a number."

  


"You've grown," Kayura said, studying Yuli appraisingly.

"It's been sixteen years," Yuli said. "I'm twenty-eight." He was giving her a wary look, and she could not blame him. She must seem to Yuli as she had to the others, a ghost from another time, unchanged from their last parting.

"I see." She tilted her head at him, looking him up and down. "And what armor is it that you bear?"

Yuli flinched as though she had struck him across the face. "I don't have any armor."

Kayura blinked her surprise. "No? But surely..." She took a step closer to him. There was no question, the staff of the Ancients chimed softly as it drew near him, and she did not think it was not the Jewel that caused it. But perhaps it was only his long years in close proximity to other armors. If Yuli had the virtue of an armor-bearer, it had not yet blossomed on his brow. There was only a dull light there that Kayura, with her bloodline, could barely perceive. One thing was certain: there was something very curious indeed about this man that the boy Yuli had become.

"We're ready," Mia announced, returning triumphant with a submissive Rowen behind her. "We'll be coming along, Kayura, if that's all right with you."

"I will not refuse any able warriors," Kayura said, but she was looking at Yuli. "If you are willing to fight, you are welcome. Let us make haste, then."

The gates opened again with a tap of the golden staff, and the four of them vanished into the cloudy light of the Netherworld.

  


Ryou was waiting with the others in Kayura's main hall, and his face lit up as Rowen came through the sliding screen with Kayura. But once he took stock of the number of arrivals, his expression switched to fury with the speed of a brush-fire changing direction. He stood up, striding towards them with his kimono sleeves flapping.

"Sorry, Rowen," Ryou said, tersely, "But I thought I said to leave Mia and Yuli behind?"

"Eh--" Rowen began, and got no further as Mia shoved past him, the butt of her naginata thudding down on the tatami for emphasis.

"And since when do I have to do what you tell me to, Ryou Sanada?"

"Since maybe always if you like staying alive," Ryou shot back, rising to her bait. "Yuli! Why did you let her come?"

"Hey man, I don't let her do anything!" Yuli held up his hands in defense. "Leave me outta this."

"Yes, Ryou," Mia said, jabbing a forefinger into the front of Ryou's crimson kimono, "Leave Yuli out of this. I'm here because I'm not some princess pining away in a tower, and because the fate of the world--astounding as it may be--is just as important to me as it is to you. I'm here, and I'm going to fight, and there's nothing you or anyone else can say to change my mind."

Ryou opened his mouth, Mia brought her spear down hard on his foot, and Ryou was done. "Do whatever the hell you want," he grumbled at last, and limped over to sit with the others.

"Thank you," Mia answered curtly, marching over to the cushion next to Yuli, "I will."

Anubisu, watching the exchange with unrestrained mirth, let out a short bark of laughter at Ryou's defeat. "Ha! Wildfire, I cannot believe a warrior like you would let his woman order him around in such a manner! It is most amusing!"

"Be quiet, Anubisu," Kayura said.

The warlord of Darkness subsided at once. "Yes'm."

Rowen let out a low whistle as he sat down on the cushion next to Sage. "Man, somebody got told."

"Yeah," Kento agreed. "See, man," he said to Anubisu, "that's why we don't come visit you more often. Stuff like that's just embarrasin'."

Anubisu glared at them, but was unwilling to retort with Kayura watching him so closely.

"Where is Naaza?" she asked.

Air stirred in the corner of the room, and the serpentine warlord appeared in his venom-green kimono. "Here, my lady." He settled into the place beside Anubisu, and it was obvious that there was room for two more people to sit in the council by their side. The empty places on either side of the warlords were somehow tragic.

"How is Rajura?" Kayura's armor shifted back into layered robes of silk as she took her place at the head of the group.

"Mending slowly," Naaza grunted. "He will not be fit to fight for some time."

"Then let us hope the Jewel offers some insight." Kayura folded her hands in her robes. "Ryou, I owe you and your comrades an explanation. You must be wondering why I have not made full use of the staff or the Oni armor."

"The thought had crossed my mind," Sage admitted.

"The staff and the armor are opposing forces," Kayura said, looking up at the shakujo, its rings gleaming in the lamplight. "Using them both means I cannot use the full strength of either of them. I suspect this duality, this divide, is somehow symbolic of the divide in my world. We cannot be both, so we are neither. I fear that in order to survive, a great choice must be made." She leveled her gaze at Ryou. "You understand this, do you not?"

"Yes," Ryou admitted, his empty fists closing as though they longed for their swords. "This armor we have is like that. We..." He looked up at the others, and saw the agreement in their faces. "We're incomplete, Kayura."

"Then we all understand the gravity of the situation," Kayura said. "Yuli, the Jewel, if you please."

Yuli had been sitting in uncomfortable silence the whole time, and he jumped as Kayura spoke to him. The whole air of the council room made him nervous, especially the stares from the two warlords across the tatami from him. "Of course," he said, and fumbled to get the comma-shaped ruby off his phone strap. "Here it is."

Kayura cupped the gem in her hands, staring down into its flickering depths. The moment it had passed into her keeping, a light began to stir within the stone. "Yes," Kayura said softly, as though to herself. "Perhaps this will have the answer we have been searching for." The stone trembled in her palm, and then it began to spin. It floated an inch above Kayura's fingers, whirling furiously, and a red light pulsed outward in a blinding flash. Everyone but Kayura turned away from the intensifying glare, and then, all at once, it was over. The jewel went dark and tumbled down the hem of Kayura's robe, while the last of the ancients fell backwards into a pool of white silk and black hair, her sightless eyes fixed on the empty air above her.

"Lady Kayura!" Naaza and Anubisu shouted together, and made to move towards her lifeless form, but a sharp cry from Yuli made them stop.

"Don't!" Yuli, sitting closest to Kayura, bent down beside her without touching her or the seemingly-inert jewel. "Don't disturb her. She's in some kind of trance. The Jewel has her."

"And now we have lost one more of our number," Anubisu grumbled. "We do not have time for this mystical nonsense! We must crush our enemies before we are crushed in turn."

"Oh?" Sai shot back at him. "And how do you propose to do that? Outnumbered, with weakened human forces?"

"You, _Ronin_ ," Anubisu spat, "are not one to tell us how to fight our own battles!"

"Torrent is right," Naaza said, laying his hand heavily on Anubisu's shoulder, to restrain him. "This is not about your feelings for Kayura, Anubisu," he added, in a low voice.

The warrior of darkness pulled away from Naaza with a snarled oath on his lips, and the others tensed for a brawl. But Anubisu had not yet finished his insult before their virtues all sang out in sudden warning, and an explosion rattled the castle down to its very foundations.

"The gates!" Naaza was fully armored by the time he was on his feet. "They're under attack!"

"The enemy has sensed our weakness," Anubisu said, his cape unfurling behind his spiked shoulderplates as he rose.

"We'll help," Ryou offered, and in a moment the quarrel was forgotten and the warriors were all armored, all before Yuli and Mia even had a chance to stand. "Yuli," Ryou said, loosening his katana in their scabbards, "I want you to stay here with Mia and White Blaze, and watch over Kayura and Rajura."

"What?" Yuli shouted, as the others rushed by him in a blur of bright colors, towards the rising sounds of battle. Yuli gripped the hilt of his katana as though it was proof of his competence. "Ryou! I can fight!"

"And so can I--" Mia began.

"Look, this is not about you two!" Ryou shouted back, and then struggled to get his voice under control. "Listen, Yuli. We've got to buy us some time. Kayura has to come out of this with answers for us, Rajura can't protect himself, and if you and Mia aren't safe there's no reason for me to go on fighting, do you understand? You're the only one I can trust with this."

Yuli's face fell. Even now, after all this time, he was left behind. "...All right, Ryou."

Ryou gave him a bracing pat on the arm. "Countin' on you, buddy." His eyes flicked to Mia, but there was nothing he could say in words, and she was the first to look away.

"Be careful," she murmured.

Ryou swallowed. "Blaze," he said, to the white tiger, "take care of them. And you two, get Rajura in here with you and barricade the doors, got it?"

And in a swirl of silk and armor he was gone, leaving only the distant scent of smoke behind him.


	6. Chapter 6

The Warlord of Illusion hardly stirred as White Blaze gently pulled his futon into the council room, drawing it close beside the center brazier for warmth. Yuli barred the doors after him as he had been told, but the chamber was deep within the castle and most of the decent fortifications were several layers out. He felt a little foolish barricading flimsy wooden doors, with nothing but paper-covered frames on all other sides.

Mia paced nervously near Kayura, and Yuli knelt down beside Rajura's futon with his sword across his knees.

The sound of battle had become almost commonplace in the distance, the cries and the clamor hushed enough that Yuli could hear the snow sliding from the tree branches outside. Rajura shuddered with pain in his sleep, and Yuli reached out with hesitant fingers to touch his hair. As though that cautious touch was a mother's caress, Rajura went still, falling back into deeper sleep.

"I always was afraid of you the most," Yuli admitted, in a whisper that Mia would not hear and Rajura, unconscious, was unlikely to. "Ever since that day at the mountain temple, right after we found Sai. Even when you turned to fight on our side, I was still afraid of you." He smoothed a tangle out of Rajura's hair, frowning. The man lying before him was sick and wounded, covered in more bandages than clothing. Where his skin did show it was deathly pale, and the deep purple smudge of exhaustion under his good eye made him look haggard even in his sleep. The scar looked like the remains of some tragic accident, not the haughty trophy of an ancient battle. "You're younger than me, now," Yuli said, in a kind of helpless wonder. "Sh'ten told me you were twenty-four when the Netherworld took you. All those years I spent terrified of you, and now..." Yuli shook his head. "I never even knew you."

Mia tapped him on the shoulder, and Yuli jumped. "Wha--Lady Kayura--?"

"No," Mia said, apologetically. She held out a cup for Yuli to take. The tea had grown cold, but she had warmed it again on the brazier. "Still nothing. I can only barely tell she's breathing."

The reverberations of someone's sure-kill thudded dully through the castle, and Yuli clutched his tea in a white-knuckled grip. The sounds of battle were growing louder. From all over, now, came the tramp of armored feet, the urgent cries of indistinct orders. "You don't really think this is all going to end here, do you, Mia?"

"Maybe," Mia said. "It's where it began. I don't know what to think."

Yuli looked down at Rajura's scarred, too-young face. "...Me, either."

  


Half of the western castle fortifications had been destroyed. By the time Ryou caught up with the others there, the battle was fully joined, and a black wave of armored shells, like ant carapaces filled with malevolent intent, had begun to beat themselves against the castle's inner defense.

"It's not good," Rowen admitted, drawing up alongside Ryou and sending a golden volley of arrows into the horde.

"Any sign of their commander?"

"Not that I've seen," Rowen said, leveling his bow again. "Just the cannon-fodder here--" the archer made a choking noise in his throat, lowering his bow in awe. "Although I suppose," he concluded, in a strangled voice, "that could be it."

A massive, sinewy claw had emerged from the lake behind the castle, towering over the figures below. It was coated in glittering white scales, each one the size of a knight's shield, razor-edged and flashing with rainbow shades of iridescence. It came down on the shore and the force of the impact sent warriors from both sides flying, the damaged walls sliding into heaps of rubble. Another claw, a sinuous curve of back, and then a great, fanged head with blazing eyes that looked right into Ryou's soul, and knew him.

"Kikoutei," Ryou breathed, as the dragon shook its tail free of the water, and swept a row of docks out of existence. With a trumpeting cry the combined spirit of their armors plunged upward into the sky, swirled around itself, and lunged down to devour those who once contained it. Ryou felt the others gather to his side, heard the clink of their armor as they readied their defense, and knew, as they did, that they would not survive this battle.

  


Kayura stood in an empty village. The houses were neat and tidy, the streets clear of stones and rubbish. And yet there was not so much as the hum of a dragonfly's wing to be heard. The pines along the ridge were as still as though they had been painted on the sky, the clouds seemed fixed in their places.

"Hello?" Kayura's voice echoed briefly and then stopped, muted. She was an intruder there, and yet she thought she knew the place, somewhere down the centuries to her earliest memories. Her feet led her down the paths unerringly, past gardens with the harvest hanging patiently on the vine, through vacant market stalls with no sellers or buyers for the wares heaped up on display. She left the village behind her as she traveled on a white gravel path through the pines, up mossy steps beneath bright crimson Torii gates, until she came to the temple.

Kaos was waiting for her.

Kayura hesitated on the last step, sandal half-hanging from her foot. Would he be angry with her? Had she fulfilled her destiny as her clan wished? There was so much she did not understand, did not know. What if she had done everything wrong?

The monk tilted back the hat shading his eyes, and held out his hands in welcome, smiling. Kayura, who for years uncounted had known nothing of her family, ran laughing and weeping into the arms of her ancestor.

  


Yuli's teacup clattered to the tatami mat, his katana flashing from its sheath as armored bodies thudded against the door. Mia was on her feet beside him before the cup had finished rocking on the floor. The red tassel of her naginata swished through the air as she brought the spear down into a defensive position. White Blaze, curled in a protective crescent around Kayura, bared his teeth in a snarl, his hackles rising.

"They've made it this far inside?" Mia exclaimed, but Yuli knew what it was she was really asking.

"Ryou and the others must not have been able to hold them back," Yuli said, sword hilt creaking under his grip. His eyes stung with unshed tears.

"I won't believe it," Mia answered, but her mouth was a thin line, her eyes too bright. "And neither will you. We can't lose faith in them now."

The doors shuddered; they were ramming them. Black fog began to creep through the straining doors, fog with the stale, cloying scent of evil.

"C'mon, Kayura," Yuli muttered, though gritted teeth. "Any time now."

But Kayura did not stir, and the jewel did not shine. Yuli wiped beads of perspiration from his burning forehead. "The two of us won't last long against them, you know."

"I know," Mia said.

Yuli nodded. Mia understood. "It's been fun, Mia. The adventure of a lifetime."

Another impact jolted the doors. The beam Yuli had used for a barricade was bowing out towards them. In the rising smoke, they could see flickering shadows from the corners of their eyes, projected on the white paper doors to the garden. The enemy was encircling them.

"For me too, Yuli." Mia took a step closer to him, pivoting backwards to face the advancing soldiers from behind, putting her back to his. "Let's do this."

The black fog was roiling towards them, and there were shapes moving inside of it, flickers of metal helms and face-guards, licking streamers of blades. It had almost reached them when Yuli was startled to find himself surrounded by grim-faced samurai in full kit, mounted for battle with pikemen and archers at the ready. He staggered back in awe and confusion.

"Wha--what the--"

" _Hurry_ ," someone rasped behind him. "I cannot control it for long."

The army faded in and out briefly, like a television image with poor reception. In the flashes of transparency Yuli could see that the situation had not changed. The doors were giving way, Kayura was unconscious with Mia and White Blaze standing over her. But the Warlord of Illusion was sitting up on his knees, one hand clutched to his belly, the other outstretched to maintain his illusion.

"Rajura!"

"Take the women," Rajura gasped, his pallid face twisting with pain. "Take them and flee... down the canals to the wilds. The castle is fallen, and we are done. I can only hold them back so long."

The scouts had torn through the paper doors at the rear of the council chamber. Mia swung her spear in a wide arc to keep them back from Kayura, from the staff of the ancients. They fell quickly under her blows, but more were coming to replace them. The barred doors in front of Yuli shuddered with a heavy blow. They would not withstand another.

"Go, boy!" Rajura shouted, swaying on his knees. His illusory army flickered, solidified, and Rajura spat blood onto the futon. "That is an order!"

Yuli's heart twisted inside him.

_I'm counting on you._

"...No," Yuli said.

The Warlord stared at him. "What?"

"I already have my orders. Ryou told me to stay here and protect you--all of you--and that's what I'm gonna do!"

"You fool!" Rajura snarled. His rage made him choke, and as he curled on the floor, coughing, his illusions dissipated completely. He struck a fist in anger against the floor. "Such pointless loyalty will only result in all our deaths!"

With a resounding crunch the doors splintered apart, and from the jagged ruin there vomited forth a seemingly-endless horde of black-armored enemies. They thundered forward to Yuli, death in their empty eye-slits, and Yuli stood his ground.

"Better that than betrayal!"

Yuli lunged forward to meet them, nothing in him but the longing to hold true to the faith Ryou placed in him. As his sword arched down through the first suit of armor, a golden light bust forth from his brow, blinding his foes. They fell back in awe and fear as Yuli's world exploded in silk, and chains, and cherry petals.


	7. Chapter 7

The Kikoutei-dragon swept Kayura's army aside like gnats, and as Kento flew through the air to crash down on a heap of rubble for the umpteenth time that day, he considered the prospect of just not getting up again. Everything hurt. Each breath was full of pain and the taste of blood, he could feel the burning stickiness of his injuries inside the shell of his armor. For that moment their adversary's attention was elsewhere, and he could lie still in the eddies of quiet at the edges of the battle's turbulence. It was weak, it was cowardly. Kento wanted to meet death on his feet. But surely he had fought enough, had enough last stands, enough last-minute victories. It couldn't go on forever. There had to be an end of some sort, and this was surely as good a day as any.

A pair of hands slipped under his armpits, pulling him up into a sitting position against a sturdy breastplate. "You're not thinking of leaving me, are you, Xiu?"

Sai only used Kento's Chinese name in the most intimate of moments, and it was like a shock of cold water. Kento shook off the worst of the inertia and pain, and felt the pulse of armor-spirit and adrenaline moving in his veins again. "Nah," Kento said. "I was just taking a breather, that's all."

"That's good." Sai's smiling face was streaked with sweat, and dirt, and blood. His surcoat had been slit to ribbons, plastered to his armor with the mud that was all that was holding it together. "Because if you get killed out here, I'm telling everyone that you keep a trading card of Aerith by your bedside, and you always cry at the end of _Advent Children_."

Kento looked up at Sai in goggle-eyed horror. "You wouldn't."

Sai nodded, grave. "It would be my only consolation if you went and broke my heart by dying."

"You know I'd never do that to you, baby." Kento slid his fingers inside the face-guard of Sai's helmet, against his lover's bare cheek. "We go out together, or not at all."

Sai smiled down at him, and kissed the bloody palm of Kento's gauntlet.

"Besides," Kento continued, "you wouldn't want me to tell anyone about your _Finding Nemo_ plushie collection that you actually still sleep with every night--"

Sai pulled away, yanking Kento the rest of the way to his feet in the same motion. "Now would be a good time to shut up and fight, love."

  


Ryou shouted his attack cry in a voice that was going hoarse, but it, like all the others' attacks, bounced harmlessly from the dragon's flank. They were fighting the combined power of their own armors, and they did not even have the full complement of nine on their side. Ryou staggered back to give Nazaa better clearance for his poison-whip. Only the warlords, still in command of their original armors, had any effect on the dragon. But they were only two men, and their strength was fading.

Looking around the battlefield, Ryou's heart sank. Most of Kayura's foot soldiers had been killed in the first sally, the remainder had fled with the appearance of Kikoutei. Now nothing but their twisted bodies remained, their souls rushing to fortify the ranks of the enemy. On the near side of the castle wall, Kento and Sai struggled to hold off the endless tide of ghost soldiers. Further off, Sage was on his knees with only his sword to hold him up, blood running freely down his face. Rowen stood over him, flinging bolt after bolt into the black mass of soldiers. He had long since given up trying to strike at Kikoutei; even the arrows that sank into the beast's gleaming eyes had been blinked away. The five of them were only echoes of what Kikoutei was, and they could not defeat it alone.

_If only Rajura could fight with us, if only Kayura could use the Oni's total strength, we might stand a chance._ Ryou shook his head as though such distractions could be physically cast off. As it was, he hoped that the others were still alive. While they had been holding off the dragon, any number of soldiers had slipped by them and headed for the castle. _Don't let me down, Yuli_ , Ryou thought, and rushed across the battlefield to lend Rowen and Sage his support.

Ryou had cleared most of the rubble and was only a few yards from Rowen when the archer suddenly began waving his arms at Ryou in warning. Over the sounds of battle, his words were indistinct, but their meaning became clear as a giant, clawed foot crashed down to the ground, scant inches from Ryou's face. Armored bodies went flying in all directions, and Ryou landed badly, on his back.

The Kikoutei dragon had flung off the weakening attacks of the two Warlords, and turned its attention once more to its former master. Ryou struggled to rise, but the spirit of his old armor was faster. Talons sank deep into the rock beneath him, and Ryou was pinned under the dragon's crushing weight. He flailed in an effort to bring his swords into play, but it was useless. He could not so much as scratch the beast's armor.

The others tried to come to Ryou's rescue, but the dragon swept them away with a condescending twitch of its tail. Ryou was the one it wanted. The massive head swiveled lower on the sinuous neck, the lantern eyes burned like a pair of twin suns. The breath from its maw had all the heat of a volcano's rage, and for the first time in many years, Ryou feared the fire. As the fanged jaws stretched wide to crush him, Ryou braced for death.

_"Kou Rai Sen!"_

Over the sound of his own certain demise, the cry seemed to come from a great distance. It caught the dragon's attention just long enough for Ryou to wonder where he had heard that attack before, and then thick streamers of scarlet light tore through the space between Ryou and the dragon's head. With a clatter of iron the light became chains, stretching in every direction, securing the great beast to the ground. As Kikoutei tried to rise, it was hampered by the chains and fell, unable to fly free. It screamed in frustration, clawing vast trenches into the earth.

Ryou scrambled out from beneath the dragon's claw, and into a veritable blizzard of cherry petals.

_Kayura's learned to use the Oni!_ Ryou thought, recognizing the shape of the armored body approaching him. He had her name in his mouth before he realized that the figure in the Oni armor was much too tall to be Kayura, that his hair was short and shaggy, and he wore in it a single tiny braid that glinted with the colored light of five seed beads.

"Yuli?!"

Ryou's erstwhile sidekick skidded to a halt beside him, and reached down with one blue-gauntleted hand to pull Ryou to his feet. Sh'ten's virtue of loyalty burned so fiercely on his brow that it was hard to make out the strokes of the kanji, and the snow seemed to melt at the touch of his footsteps. Ryou's strength surged inside of him, and his breath no longer plumed in the cold.

Spring had come to the Netherworld, at last.

"Sorry we're late," Yuli said, and an army emerged from the swirl of cherry petals at his back. Half of them were illusion and at their lead was Rajura riding astride White Blaze, neither of them looking too pleased at the arrangement. The others were the remains of Kayura's army. She ran unmounted before them, dressed in simple o-yoroi and a lacquered helmet that shielded her eyes. In one hand she bore a golden sword with the shakujo's rings on the hilt, and the jewel of life gleamed at her throat. The fresh forces, both real and conjured, fell upon the remaining soldiers with a fervor that was all too real.

Ryou started to ask what the hell had just happened, but he was startled by a shrill cry behind him.

" _Don't you dare touch him!_ "

A soldier had crept up behind Ryou while he was distracted, sword raised to strike Ryou's head from his shoulders. The tassled point of a naginata had pierced through the soldier's breastplate, and as the empty armor crumbled, Ryou looked past it and into Mia's face.

She was dirty, bloodied, spattered with canal-mud. Her hair had come undone in a tangled red cloud, and her eyes flashed as she yanked the point of her weapon out of the armor shell. She was easily the most beautiful thing Ryou had ever seen. For a moment the battle, Yuli's new armor, and all of the Netherworld faded around him as he reached out to Mia and told her so, long and passionately, with an eloquence he could never manage in words.

"Excuse me, Wildfire," Kayura said, with a wry tone at having to interrupt a warrior mid-kiss. "We are not quite done here."

"Right, Sorry!" Ryou said, stepping back from Mia, who had gone pink, and not from the heat of the fight. "What--um--what're we doing?"

"Fighting your old armors," Yuli reminded him, dryly.

Mia coughed a little and said, relieved in more ways than one, "Here come the others!"

Rajura had left his illusory army to gather up a battered Anubisu and Naaza, and brought them to stand with Kayura.

"You're awake!" Rowen exclaimed, clambering over the rubble to reach them, with Kento and Sai and Sage close behind. "What do we need to--holy mother of _god_." He had just sorted out that it was Yuli, and not Kayura, in the Oni armor.

"Hi, guys!" Yuli said, as though he was not in armor, as though they were not standing in the middle of a battle still to be won.

Kayura rattled her sword before the shocked gurgles could turn into questions. A keening roar from the Kikoutei dragon emphasized her point. "I have spoken to Kaos," she announced.

Everyone went quiet, their attention on her complete.

"At his counsel, and knowing that there was a warrior ready to take up the Oni's chain and the virtue of Loyalty, I have laid it aside forever. In exchange, Kaos bestowed upon me the full inheritance of his power." Kayura reached up and unlatched her helmet. Her hair cascaded down around her shoulders, as white as the first snow of winter. "Warriors, it is time to end this." She lifted her head, and as the warming breeze caught her gleaming hair and spread it out like a pennant, they all went to their knees before her.

"We are yours to command, Lady Kayura," Ryou said.

"Then know that you have put aside your destiny for long enough," Kayura said. "You must shoulder it again. Wildfire. Strata. Halo. Torrent. Hardrock." She walked between them as she spoke, and without a word, they rose and followed her. Down the ragged landscape they went, with the others following at a distance, to where the dragon lay, defeated and straining beneath the Oni's chains. It rolled one eye towards Kayura, and at the warriors behind her, and let out a single, plaintive cry.

"I know," Kayura said, running a small hand over the cruel antlers of the beast. "I will end your suffering." The rings on her sword clanged wildly as she held up the blade. "Brace yourselves!" she cried, and the golden blade thrust down into the dragon's tear-bright eye.

Ryou's heart burst into flames within his breast. The fire licked over him from head to foot, consuming, engulfing. In the wake of the flames there were other sensations, a rush of air, a shiver of lightning, the crushing force of the tide and the slow omnipotence of stone.

Ryou opened his eyes, unaware that he had closed them. The dragon was gone. The soldiers were gone. The netherworld castle stood whole and unblemished against a gilded sky, and all the sakura were blooming. Ryou's armor, like Kayura's hair, was as white and shining as the mirror of the heavens.

As quickly as it had come, it was gone from him; the four elements scattered home until only the fire was left. But as his friends' faces were illuminated in the otherworldly light of their long-lost armor, Ryou knew that, like theirs, it would come again when needed, when called for.

Kikoutei was his once more.


	8. Chapter 8

Under the largest sakura in the castle gardens, there was a humble marker of black stone. Half-buried beneath a thick fall of pink blossoms, it bore only a few kanji of inscription, one name. Yuli swept the petals from the stone's base, placed a bowl of plain rice on it, pinned a single incense stick among the grains, and lit it. The coil of smoke unraveled before the engraved marks of Sh'ten Douji's name, and Yuli bowed.

"You were a friend to him in those days he was apart from us, were you not?"

Yuli had known Rajura was there. It was a new extra sense, an _awareness_ , and that knowing was almost as unsettling as it would have been had Rajura taken him by surprise. Yuli turned back to Sh'ten's grave, and stared hard at the offering he had placed there. "I think I was more of a pest."

The Warlord of Illusion walked slowly. His wounds were not yet healed, in spite of all Naaza's efforts. Some things simply took time. Sakura petals rustled around his sandals as he moved closer to the grave of his former comrade. "Still, I expect your presence was a comfort. You represented all he wished to save, after all. We were by his side for centuries, and yet at his death, when a warrior most should have his comrades by his side, we abandoned him."

Yuli felt Rajura's guilt as much as he heard it in his voice. They had been close, those two. Sh'ten's defection had stung deep, and his death hurt far more. "It wasn't your fault. I don't think Sh'ten would blame you."

Rajura snorted. "Don't you? Perhaps you give him too much kindness in your memories."

Yuli remembered not the terrifying figure in armor, but the gentle smile, the protective hand, the savior in the last desperate hour. "He _was_ kind," Yuli insisted. And then, with something of a challenge, he added, "Perhaps I knew him better."

Rajura flinched, lip curling in readiness to retort, and then he turned away. "...Perhaps you did, at that." Rajura raised his hand to touch his scar, his strength not yet such that it was worth the vanity of conjuring a patch of cobweb to cover it. "We were comrades, yet always we fought amongst ourselves. But Sh'ten would want us to make you welcome in our company, and so I shall." He looked up at the cherry tree, at the gilded sky. "You have spent so much time among _them_ , it is a very different thing to them, and to you, what it means to be an armor bearer." He turned back to Yuli, and all unexpectedly, bowed at him in respectful greeting. "I wonder what change your spring will bring us, Oni. I fear it as I do the presence of a mighty adversary at my gates, yet I rush towards it gladly to prove myself worthy."

"Thank you," Yuli said, not sure how to swallow Rajura's deference. "And you can call me Yuli." 

"Yuwri," Rajura drawled, with a note of distaste. "What manner of name is that?"

"It's short for Ulysses," Yuli said, dusting more sakura petals off of Sh'ten's monument. "My father wanted me to have a western name in case we had to move abroad. Ulysses was an ancient Greek hero he liked."

"I have never heard of this Yurasees," Rajura said, dismissively. "Or this Guriku shogunate. He must not have been much of a hero."

Yuli started to answer that, and then remembered he was talking to a man who had been born when the sun rose on Japan and set in barbaric places nobody there cared about, and there was a centuries-wide gap in their cultures. _The past is a foreign country_ , Yuli thought, _And the netherworld isn't even on Earth, really._ "You would not have been likely to hear his stories when you lived in the human world," Yuli said at last. "My Japanese name is Jun."

"Jun." The warlord of illusion tasted the name in his mouth as though it was a strange new dish. "A plain name. But it will do." He nodded, satisfied at the conclusion of the interview. "Your friends are returning home, Jun. It is time to say farewell."

  


"It's not quite the old hood-ornament look," Rowen was saying to Sage, as Yuli and Rajura joined the others in the front courtyard. "Sort of a mishmash. I kinda like it."

"You liked looking like a big blue fork," Sage returned, unconvinced. "I'm not sure you're the best opinion to follow in mystical yoroi fashion for this season." 

"It was a little different," Mia considered. "But that's to be expected. It was without you a long time, and it merged with the armor Suzunagi gave you. It couldn't help but evolve." 

"And I hope you will not need its aid again anytime soon," Kayura said, taking both of Ryou's hands in hers, like a kindly queen. "But when you do, may you find it strong and certain." 

The warlords had gathered silently behind Kayura, and Yuli hesitated at the edge of their line, hovering somewhere between them and the warriors, uncertain.

"And when you need us again," Ryou answered Kayura, "we'll hear you."

Kayura bowed her snowy head, her face serene and untroubled. "I don't doubt you will. But this must be farewell, for now." She brought the butt of her staff down onto the gravel path, and with a low note of power a Netherworld gate appeared over them, dwarfing the castle wall.

Yuli took a breath, but said nothing as the others said their goodbyes and well-wishes. Only when the doors had opened, and Ryou and the others had turned towards the light of the mortal world, did Yuli find his voice.

"Ryou."

They all stopped and looked at him, all of them except White Blaze, who was waiting patiently at Kayura's side.

Ryou frowned with his eyebrows. "Well come on, Yul. It's not like you can catch the next train."

"I know," Yuli said, and then he took a half-step backwards, without turning. The other three warlords were there at his back, and without any prior arrangement they fell into an informal flanking formation around Kayura, an arrow's point with the last of the Ancients at their head. Yuli could _feel_ them there, the separate quarters of his whole, and he could feel Kayura over them all, as a compass point feels the sweep of a needle. Yuli sensed the warmth of golden light on his brow, saw the comprehension on Ryou's face, and emotion closed a thick hand around his throat.

"...You're not coming back with us." It was not a question.

Yuli shook his head in a no.

Ryou bit his lip, nodded to himself. "Yeah," he said. "I guess not."

Yuli looked at them but couldn't meet any one gaze for too long. Sage's approving nod, Rowen's sad smile, Sai's shining eyes, Kento's unabashed tear, they were all too much. Mia had her hands to her mouth, in realization and disbelief. Only Ryou's expression was unchanged. Ryou, Yuli's childhood hero, his friend, his brother in everything but bloodline. They both moved forward and met in the space between, in a rough and raw embrace, and Yuli pressed his face into the leather collar of Ryou's jacket.

"You can always find us in the armor," Ryou whispered roughly.

Yuli nodded. White Blaze had come up to them, and bumped his heavy, furry shoulder against their hips.

"I'm so proud of you." Ryou's grip tightened, almost painful.

Yuli made a little gargling sound. "God, Ryou, stop. I'm already crying in front of these guys."

"Well so am I, dammit." Ryou pulled back to smile at him, and he was. He cuffed Yuli's shoulder. "You'll come visit, right?"

Yuli blinked his burning eyes. "But the gate-- I won't be able--" 

"Kayura is going to set one up at the lake, behind Mia's." It was Ryou's turn to grin at the understanding on Yuli's face. "It's private, and it'll be close to us. It's too dangerous to do otherwise now, to seal things off. We'll just have to watch both sides."

Yuli's heart soared. It was so unexpectedly right, and the last shadow over his armor inheritance was lifted.

"So we'll be expecting you over for dinner sooner rather than later," Sai called out, and shot the other Warlords a narrow look. "And bring your friends."

Yuli went to his knees and flung his arms around White Blaze's neck, but it was not out of grief. The tiger nuzzled Yuli's face in a farewell that would not be lasting, Yuli went back to join his new companions, and waved as his old ones vanished one by one through the gate.

"There's just one thing, Sai," Rowen said, just before the light swallowed him entirely. "Are we ever gonna get those blueberry pancakes?"


End file.
